The 2026 aerospace-and-defense scoreboard has separated cleanly across three widely owned names, and the individual leaders have beaten their own sector basket. RTX (NYSE:RTX | RTX Price Prediction) has dominated the group, with GE Aerospace (NYSE:GE) in second and Boeing (NYSE:BA) the only laggard of the three.
RTX stock is up 14% year to date to $208.84, leading the trio into late August. Meanwhile, GE Aerospace stock is up 11% year to date to $341.19, tracking just behind the leader. Boeing stock is the outlier, with shares down 3% year to date to $210.26.
The iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF (NYSEARCA:ITA) sits between the two leaders and the laggard. Notably, ITA ETF shares are up 8% year to date to $233.09, placing the fund behind both RTX and GE Aerospace and ahead of only Boeing. Two of the three headline names beat their own sector benchmark outright, which reverses the usual pattern where a diversified basket smooths out single-name divergence.
RTX Sets the Pace, GE Aerospace Keeps Up
RTX’s lead is the story of 2026 in this cohort, and it holds up against the ETF benchmark by a comfortable margin. The stock has outpaced both peers and the sector fund, and its year-to-date gain is meaningfully wider than the ETF’s, which isn’t the usual outcome for a heavyweight sitting inside a passive basket.
GE Aerospace stock sits only a few points behind RTX and remains comfortably above the fund. Together, the two winners have delivered gains that a passive holder of the ITA ETF alone would have partially captured but not fully matched.
The ITA ETF holds a broad range of aerospace and defense companies well beyond these three, so its return reflects far more than this trio. Its 8% year-to-date gain is a solid result on its own, just not enough to keep up with the two individual winners.
Boeing Trails the Group Year to Date
Boeing stock is the drag on this trio, sitting in negative territory for the year while its two peers and the sector fund each advance. A 3% year-to-date decline against an 11% gain for GE Aerospace and a 14% gain for RTX is a wide spread in a group often lumped together.
Passive exposure through the ITA ETF delivered its middle result partly because a familiar heavyweight in the sector remains in the red for 2026. The gap between Boeing and its two peers accounts for a meaningful piece of the divergence between the individual leaders and the basket, and it also shows how much single-name outcomes can pull on an ETF result even when the fund holds a wide mix of aerospace and defense companies.
Three Business Models Under One Sector Label
These are three different businesses wearing the same aerospace and defense label. GE Aerospace builds engines and sells decades of servicing on each one, a recurring-revenue model tied to how much of the existing fleet actually flies.
Boeing builds the airframes themselves, a manufacturing business with far more exposure to production execution and program timing. RTX spans defense systems and aerospace components across a wider portfolio than either peer, giving it multiple growth engines rather than one.
A year that separated these names this far is a reminder that a sector label hides more than it reveals. The 2026 gap between best and worst here is wider than what many holders expect from three household aerospace and defense blue chips, and it comes from real differences in how each business earns its revenue rather than a passing macro swing.
Position Sizing for the Rest of 2026
The spread between top and bottom in this group has been wide enough that concentration in any single name carried real consequences this year, even among three large, established companies. Sizing that treated RTX, GE Aerospace, and Boeing shares as interchangeable would have produced very different outcomes, depending on which name got the bigger weight.
Investors can watch for the sector basket to keep behaving unlike its two strongest components, since the fund’s holdings reach well beyond this trio. The ITA ETF’s 8% year-to-date result reflects a much broader mix of aerospace and defense exposures than these three names alone.
Traders can watch for the same ranking to hold into year-end, or for Boeing’s turnaround story to start closing the gap on GE Aerospace and RTX. Moderate position sizing across the group looks more prudent than a concentrated bet on any single name, given how differently these three business models have been rewarded so far in 2026.
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