I'm still kicking myself for not owning United Technologies before the big merger with Raytheon. UTX had the Carrier and OTIS side, which gave it more balance and diversification, and those both took off as independent stocks. Years ago I tried to get my dad to diversify his GE position with some UTX (he was a retired aero engineer from GE's Space Division), but unfortunately he stuck with the GE stock.
Fwiw, for exposure to the Aerospace / Defense sector, I decided to go with the ETF (PPA), which has a better / smoother chart than the individual stocks like LMT, NOC, RTX. For individual stocks with Defense / Aerospace exposure I went with CACI Intl (CACI) and Transdigm (TDG), which have phenomenal long term charts, and also some Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) -
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