[8] Electric Boat was cash-flush but lacking in work following World War II, during which it produced 80 submarines for the Navy, with its workforce shrinking from 13,000 to 4,000 by 1946.

[6] President and chief executive officer John Jay Hopkins started looking for companies that would fit into Electric Boat's market in hopes of diversifying.

The factory alone was worth more than $22 million, according to the Canadian government's calculations,[6] excluding the value of the remaining contracts for planes or spare parts.

Hopkins hired Canadian-born mass-production specialist H. Oliver West to take over the president's role and return Canadair to profitability.

[11] The sale was approved by government oversight with the provision that GD would continue to operate out of Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, Texas.

This factory had been set up in order to spread out strategic aircraft production and rented to Convair during the war to produce B-24 Liberator bombers.

[12] General Dynamics purchased Liquid Carbonic Corporation in September 1957 and controlled it as a wholly owned subsidiary until a Federal antitrust ruling required its sale to shareholders in January 1969, being bought later that month by Houston Natural Gas Company.

Chicago industrialist Henry Crown became the company's largest shareholder and merged his Material Service Corporation with GD in 1959.

In 1970, the board brought in McDonnell Douglas president Dave Lewis (no relation) as chairman and CEO, who served until retiring in 1985.

[6] During the early 1960s the company bid on the United States Air Force's Tactical Fighter, Experimental (TFX) project for a new low-level "penetrator".

Robert McNamara, newly installed as the Secretary of Defense, forced a merger of the TFX with U.S. Navy plans for a new long-range "fleet defender" aircraft.

[20] With the naval version not accepted, production estimates for 2,400 F-111s including exports were sharply reduced, but GD still made a $300 million profit on the project.

In 1997, General Dynamics acquired Computing Devices Ltd based in Hastings, England, which had developed avionics and mission systems for the Panavia Tornado, British Aerospace Harrier II and Hawker Siddeley Nimrod.

[25][26] In 2001, Computing Devices Canada (CDC) was awarded a contract from the UK Ministry of Defence to supply tactical communication systems for their Bowman program.

In 2004, General Dynamics bid for the UK company Alvis plc, the leading British manufacturer of armored vehicles.

The US alleged that GD defectively manufactured or failed to test parts used in US military aircraft from September 2001 to August 2003, such as for the C-141 Starlifter transport plane.

[30] In 2014, the government of Canada announced it had selected the General Dynamics Land Systems subsidiary in London, Ontario, to produce Light Armoured Vehicles for Saudi Arabia as part of a $10 billion deal with the Canadian Commercial Corporation.

[32][33] In December 2018, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested Canada might scrap the deal, the company warned that doing so could lead to "billions of dollars in liability" and risk the loss of thousands of jobs.

[34][35] Trudeau has since said that while he is critical of Saudi conduct, he cannot simply scrap the deal because "Canada as a country of the rule of law needs to respect its contracts.

"[36] On 30 January 2019, CEO Phebe Novakovic warned investors that the matter had "significantly impacted" the company's cash flow because Saudi Arabia was nearly $2 billion in arrears on its payments.

[37] In 2018, General Dynamics acquired information technology services giant CSRA for $9.7 billion, and merged it with GDIT.

[38] General Dynamics has been accused by groups such as Code Pink and Green America of "making money from human suffering by profiting off the migrant children held at U.S. detention camps"[39] due to its IT services contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, the government agency that operates shelters for unaccompanied children to include those separated from their families as part of the Trump administration family separation policy.

[40][41] The company says it has no role in constructing or operating detention centers, and that its contracts to provide training and technical services began in 2000 and have spanned across four presidential administrations.

[42] It was announced in September 2018 that the U.S. Navy awarded contracts for 10 new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers from General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Huntington Ingalls Industries.

[45] In December 2020, the board of directors for General Dynamics announced a regular quarterly dividend of $1.10, payable on February 5, 2021.

[48] According to a report by Reuters, General Dynamics was the primary contractor for a United States military-run propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, including using fake social media accounts to spread the disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law.

[49] According to an unnamed source cited by Reuters, a military audit of General Dynamics's work on the project concluded that the company had engaged in sloppy tradecraft and took inadequate precautions to conceal the origins of the fake accounts created for the campaign.

[49] General Dynamics' supply of weapons to Israel in the Israel–Hamas war has led to protests at facilities in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Lincoln, Nebraska; Saco, Maine; New London, Connecticut; and Garland, Texas.