Phebe N. Novakovic
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at General Dynamics
Thanks Kim. Now, let me review the quarter in the context of the business segments and provide detailed color as appropriate. First, aerospace. Aerospace did very well in the absence of the G700 deliveries. It had revenue of $2.1 billion and operating earnings of $255 million with a 12.2% operating margin. Revenue is $192 million more than last year's first quarter, a 10.1% increase. To give you a little detail here, the increase was driven by an increase in new aircraft deliveries and an increase in services at both Gulfstream and jet aviation partially offset by significantly lower special mission aircraft activity, which is always lumpy. The 24 deliveries in the quarter are fewer than planned, but three more than the year-ago quarter. The mix in the quarter favored large cabin and the 650 in particular, which helped both revenue and earnings.
Operating earnings of $255 million are up $26 million over last year's first quarter and 11.4% increase. Earnings on both new aircraft and aircraft services enjoyed good increases offset in part by lower earnings on special mission, higher G&A and net R&D. While Gulfstream will continue to experience part shortages that caused significant out-of-station work, which is inherently less efficient, the supply chain is clearly improving and much more predictable. As is now apparent, we plan to deliver a considerable number of G700s in 2024.
The first 20 to be delivered are fully built and deliveries have begun. By the end of this month, the next seven to eight will be ready. We plan to deliver these 50 to 52 planes over the quarters in relatively even numbers with improving margins quarter-over-quarter as we go along. The first 20, what we call the lot one, carries some cost and retrofit burden that will not affect subsequent aircraft deliveries. So expect margins in the second quarter to be similar to the first quarter with significant improvement in Q3, Q4.
Aerospace had a decent quarter from an orders perspective with a book-to-bill of 1.2:1 in dollar terms. Sales activity and customer interest is evident this quarter, but concerns over persistent inflation and monetary policy in the US, together with concerns about conflict in the Middle East has slowed the consummation of transactions to some degree. It is also worth noting that a significant portion of the demand we see is fleet replenishment for corporations. These multi aircraft deals usually proceed at a slower pace.
The G800 flight test and certification program continues to progress well. The aircraft design, manufacturing and the overall program are very mature. We continue to target certification of G800 for nine months after the G700 certification, although I'm increasingly reluctant to give estimates about these things that are ultimately out of our control. In short, the aerospace team had a good quarter G700, FAA certification is in the rear view mirror and we hope EASA's certification is hard on its heels and we expect nicely improving margins, particularly in the second half. Next, combat systems. Combat had revenue of $2.1 billion, up almost 20% over the year ago quarter. Earnings of $282 million are up 15.1% margins at 13.4% are down 60 basis points over the year-ago quarter.
It is interesting to observe that this very strong increase in revenue is in comparison to last year's first quarter, which enjoyed a 5% increase over 2022. We saw increased revenue performance in each of the three businesses. The increase came from higher volume on new international tank programs, higher artillery program volume and higher volume on piranha programs and bridges. We also experienced very strong order performance.
Orders in the quarter drove total backlog to $15.6 billion, up $1.5 billion from this time a year ago quarter. Demand for combat systems and products continues to increase, particularly in Europe and in some lines of business in the US. Orders for wheeled and track combat vehicles are up significantly, reflecting the heightened threat environment. In addition to several new combat vehicle starts demand for Abrams also continues. We've seen tank orders from new users and a number of countries will be introducing Abrams into their combat fleets for the first time. Since Q1 last year, we have received almost $1 billion in orders from both US allies through FMS and the US Army. In the US, we are rapidly increasing ammunition production with the opening of our Texas facility, which will increase current 155 millimeter ammo capacity by 83%.
As the year goes on, we will continue to work with our army customer to further increase ammo capacity to meet their requirements. Turning to marine systems, once again, our shipbuilding units are demonstrating impressive revenue growth. [Indecipherable] recent history that I gave you last year at this time with respect to growth in this decade. The first quarter of 2020 was up 9.1% against Q1 of 2019. Q1 2021 was up 10.6% over. Q1 2020. Q1 2022 was up 6.8% over Q1 2021 and Q1 2023 was up 12.9% over Q1 2022. Finally, this quarter at $3.3 billion, is up 11.3% over Q1 2023. This is an impressive growth ramp by any standard. However growth ramps of this character bring with them supply chain and operation issues that are challenging. This particular quarter's growth was almost exclusively Columbia-class construction. Operating earnings are $232 million in the quarter, up 10% from the year ago quarter. Operating margin is basically the same as last year's quarter.
We anticipate that this will improve as we progress through the year. As we have talked about on previous calls, the story at the marine group is efficiently managing the growth, propelled by the US Navy's need for ships, particularly submarines. As a labor-intensive, heavy manufacturing industry the shipbuilding industrial base was hit hard by the demographic impacts of COVID. This, coupled with a number of sole-source suppliers of highly complex components, has made it difficult for the industrial base to keep pace with increasing demand.
The significant financial investments we have made in our shipyards over the last twelve years, particularly at electric boat has mitigated the impact on us, but we are still hit by schedule and quality problems in the supply chain. Our job is to minimize the efficiency and schedule impacts of latent material by increasing our throughput and we are doing that each and every quarter. In Q1 alone, our productivity increased 11% but there is more to do. Finally, the Navy's investment in the supply chain has helped and will continue to help as we move forward.
For technologies we're off to a solid start. Revenue in the quarter of $3.2 billion is down less than 1% from the prior year, but up 2% over the fourth quarter last year and modestly ahead of our expectation for the start of the year. Operating earnings of $295 million are consistent with last year, yielding a margin of 9.2%. As we have previously discussed, margins will continue to be driven by the mix of IT service activity and hardware volume. The group received $4 billion in orders during the quarter for a book-to-bill ratio 1.2:1, both businesses experienced strong order activity. In GDIT's case, the highest book-to-bill since mid 2019.
This led to a total backlog of $13.5 billion, an increase of over 5% from a year ago and total estimated contract value of $42.7 billion. The story in technologies is one of steady growth, particularly at GDIT and increasingly, admission systems, as they transition from legacy programs to new programs and faster growth lines of business. Both businesses have robust pipelines driven by their respective investments in different technologies. The group's continual focus on margin performance will result in sequential margin expansion throughout the year as they continue to build their backlog and grow. As you know, we never update guidance at this time of year.
Apart from what I have already said about aerospace I will stick to that custom. We do, however confirm the guidance we gave you at the end of last quarter, and we'll update it at midpoint of the year as we typically do. This concludes my remarks with respect to what was in many respects a rewarding quarter.
Let me now turn the call back to Nicole to take your questions.
