It's a very, very bad thing. Northrop is the master of ineptitude. I worked for Grumman before Northrop bought us out. Grumman was a good company, still kinda had a family feel about it. Then the Northrop fiasco happened. They made it seem like it was going to be a merger of equals and that minimum changes would happen to our division. I was working on the J-Stars project: We were coming along nice on the airframes, the Air Force was happy with our progress and we were under budget. Then slowly the Northrop people started showing up. Basically, Northrop used the J-Stars program for all their California employees that needed a place to go. They had lost the J-Dam project (cost overruns), The B-2 program was coming towards an end (after they had overrun it by billions). And all these Northrop employees came in on top if the current Grumman employees. We all took about three steps down the ladder. Then they rewrote the pay policy so the Californai employees could keep their salary levels (the cost of living in Louisiana is low) and the old Grumman employees were basically treated as new hires within Northrop and had to start over.
With new Northrop management in place, they set about trying to figure out ways to get more money out of the Air Force contract. J-stars was a fixed price (plus) contract, The plus being "over and aboves" Sort of mini contracts with the Air Force to fix minor problems found in the airframe. On the first 4 A/C (under Grumman) there were a few hundred of the these O&A's per aircraft. Once Nothrop came in, that number jumped to ver 15,000 per aircraft. Needless to say, the J-Stars contract under Northrop ended in cost overruns in the millions and the Air Force cut the number of J-Stars to be built because of this. Next Northrop bought out Newport News. Next fiasco. J-stars was winding down to the last few aircraft. So what to do with all these old Northrop employees that had jacked up 3 different military contracts. (B-2, J-Dam, J-Stars) Hey lets send them to the new Newport News shipyard we just bought. Remember, these are all aerospace employees and managers. Well they did the same thing at the New Orleans and Mississippi shipyards. They sent the old Northrop employees there over the top of the existing NN employees and guess what. Huge cost overruns and a pissed off Navy. The Navy has had to reduce the number of ships on their contracts because of the overruns at the shipyards. They have officially put Northrop on notice about a month ago of a full review of the operations due to overruns and shoddy manufacturing. Northrop delivered one ship recently that was probably 60% complete and the steering mechanisms broke on the first sea trial. They were trying to hide how incomplete the ship was to the Navy until they could get back in drydock and hurry up and finish.
Needless to say I left the company back in 98, but I still follow what happening with Norhtrop because I still have friends that work there.
I work for Gulfstream now and when General Dyanamics bought us out few years ago, I was worried about the same thing happening. But actually GD has been great to work for. They have a good cash flow and have invested alot in our R&D projects, so all is well now.

But I really fear for Scaled the Northrop will get too involved and mess their business up completely. I know the was a long rant, but I can't stand Northrop and their policies.