Braddock, Dunn & McDonald, later known as BDM, thenBDM International, was a technical services firm founded in 1959 in New York City. Its founders were Dr. Joseph V. Braddock,[1] Dr.Bernard J. Dunn,[2] and Dr. Daniel F. McDonald,[3] who each received a PhD fromFordham University in the Bronx, New York. In 1997,TRW purchased BDM, and in 2002Northrop Grumman bought TRW.
Within a year of its founding, the company moved toEl Paso, Texas, to be close to the U.S. Army's Air Defense Center atFort Bliss, Texas, theWhite Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, andHolloman Air Force Base, also in New Mexico. The founders offered their experience in missile guidance, applied optics, electronic instrumentation, and radiation physics to the U.S. Defense Department, primarily to the U.S. Army.[4][5]
A few years later the three founders hired Earle Williams, an engineer with a degree fromAuburn University in Alabama, who eventually became President and CEO. He led the company through a time of rapid growth and expansion. Among Williams's most significant decisions was to move BDM to theVirginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., a few miles west of the Pentagon. That location offered the company a better opportunity to compete for defense contracts than it could from El Paso.[6][7] For the rest of its existence as a company it occupied a series of ever-larger office spaces in an unincorporated area known asTysons Corner, Virginia, formed by the interchange of the newly completedCapital Beltway and Virginia Routes 7 and 123.[8]
The company grew rapidly, along with Tysons Corner. In the early 1960s Tysons Corner was a sleepy crossroads, but has since grown into a classic "edge city", and a home of many government and military contractors. Williams promoted the area as a suitable place for technology-oriented firms. Tysons Corner and the surrounding towns became the home of many of BDM's competitors, including Planning Research Corporation,DynCorp International, andCACI. Although all competed with BDM, in the buildup of defense budgets in the late 20th century, nearly all prospered.[9] For a time, the press referred to these companies as "Beltway bandit",[10][11][12] the phrase was originally a mild insult, implying that the companies preyed like bandits on the generosity of the federal government. Employees of those companies, including BDM President Earle Williams, took offense to that term.[13]
Although the location of the headquarters of these defense contractors was part of an overall trend of movement to the suburbs beginning in the 1960s, BDM played a leading role in the specifics of this movement into the Virginia suburbs of Washington.[14]
In 1988, BDM was purchased byFord Aerospace and became a part of Ford Motor Company.[15][16] In 1990, Ford Aerospace was sold to Loral and BDM was spun off to theCarlyle Group.[17][18] In 1997, BDM was purchased byTRW, an aerospace systems and technical services company,[19][20] which in turn was acquired byNorthrop Grumman in 2002.[21][22]
^Szczepanowski, Richard (February 18, 2021)."Joseph Braddock dies at 91".Arlington Catholic Herald. Archived fromthe original on November 7, 2024. RetrievedNovember 7, 2024.
