By Otto Kreisher
The Aerospace Industries Association issued a report Monday warning that because of consolidation and other fundamental changes in the defense industry manufacturers may not be able to provide the technologies required to carry out the strategies the Defense Department considers necessary to meet future threats.
Without considering industrial effects when choosing strategies DOD
might choose strategies that industry is no longer facilitized to support
or those strategic decisions could break industrial capabilities that may
be required in the future Fred Downey AIAs vice president for national
security policy said at a news conference.
That could reduce strategic options or leave the U.S. vulnerable to
threats Downey said.
To avoid that emerging danger AIA urged that the impact on the defense
industrial base be considered during development of national security and
defense strategies such as the current Quadrennial Defense Review and in
defense budgeting and acquisition decisions.
In a briefing on the report Fred Downey and J.J. Gertler -- former Hill
staffers who have been involved in past QDRs -- said defense industrial base issues were never discussed in the four previous reviews an indication the industry has reasons to be concerned.
In addition when Defense Secretary Gates unveiled his major program cuts in April he said explicitly that defense industry jobs were not a factorin any of his decisions.
In its report AIA recommended reinvigorated congressional oversight and review of defense industrial base issues and restoration of the regular meetings of the Defense secretary and industry executives. They were canceled by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
AIA President Marion Blakey noted that the United States has long depended for its military superiority on technological dominance which was achieved by a strong Pentagon-defense industry partnership.
We are concerned that that partnership is weakening and that military
leaders are assuming an industrial capability to meet new requirements
which may not exist she said.
In preparing the report titled The Unseen Cost Industrial Base Consequences of Defense Strategy Choices AIA studied the abilities of 10
aerospace industry sectors to respond to three possible future strategic
scenarios. Those were a continuation of the current strategy an increased
focus on irregular warfare and a power projection situation in which
most military forces were U.S. based and had to be deployed quickly to meet a threat.
The study found that three key sectors were significantly affected by the strategic choices: tactical aviation consisting of fighters and attack aircraft; large military aircraft such as refueling tankers and cargo planes and ballistic missile defense.
The two aircraft sectors could be weakened by lack of production under
situation and unable to respond to changing needs. A reduced missile
defense-design workforce might be unable to respond to a demand for
different systems required by a changed strategy.
Minimally affected by the different strategies were unmanned aerial
systems; command control communications computers and intelligence
surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems; and strategic nuclear capabilities. Those three were required for all three scenarios.
Four sectors were assessed as minimally affected by the strategic choices because they already were in such a degraded condition that they would have difficulty responding to any of the scenarios.
Those were rotary-wing aviation and long-range strike or bombers becausetheir research and development capabilities have eroded for lack of newprograms; space power where the industrial base is too weak to respondquickly to new demands and science and technology a sector that isdepleted due to lack of funding and an aging work force.
