General Dynamics Corporation (NYSE: GD) is a U.S. aerospace and defense company formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2011 it is the fourth largest defense contractor in the world. It is headquartered in West Falls Church, unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Falls Church area.

The company has changed markedly in the post-Cold War era of defense consolidation. The company has four main business segments: Marine Systems, Combat Systems, Information Systems and Technology, and Aerospace. The company's former Fort Worth Division manufactured the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the most-produced Western jet fighter, but that subsidiary was sold to Lockheed in 1993. GD reentered the airframe business in 1999 with their purchase of Gulfstream Aerospace.

General Dynamics traces its ancestry to John Philip Holland's Holland Torpedo Boat Company. This company was responsible for developing the U.S. Navy's first submarines built at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard, located in Elizabethport, New Jersey. The revolutionary submarine boat Holland VI was built there, its keel being laid down in 1896. Crescent's superintendent and naval architect, Arthur Leopold Busch, supervised the construction of this submarine. After being launched on 17 May 1897, it was eventually purchased by the Navy and renamed USS Holland. The Holland was officially commissioned on 12 October 1900 and became the United States Navy's first submarine, later known as SS-1. The Navy placed an order for more submarines, which were developed in rapid succession and were assembled at two different locations on both coasts. These submarines were known as the A-Class or Adder Class, and became America's first fleet of underwater craft at the beginning of the 20th century.