's (NYSE: BA) second-quarter earnings report was a mess -- bad enough that it may have gotten its chief executive officer fired.

Boeing missed earnings. It missed sales. It tallied $4.3 billion in negative free cash flow, and it has burned $8.2 billion so far this year. Part of the problem was Boeing's commercial airplanes unit, where deliveries fell 32% year over year in Q2. But Boeing's defense business is in a bad way as well, with sales slipping only 2% but operating profit margin so deeply negative that losses soared 73%.

Things are so bad at Boeing Defense, Space, and Security (BDS) that aerospace analyst Chris Quilty of Quilty Space quipped, "I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they spun out or sold the Defense Space business as a way to mitigate their sprawling problems."

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Source Fool.com