September 26, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Lockheed Martin recently broke ground on two new buildings in Courtland, Alabama, a small town 45 mi. west of Huntsville. The buildings will house the manufacturing and testing of hypersonics weapon programs. Lockheed expects to move at least 72 new jobs into Courtland and add another 200 in Huntsville over the next three years.
It is big news for Courtland, which saw its population drop to 609 in the 2010 U.S. Census from 769 in 2000. But in the grand scheme of things, the dozens or perhaps hundreds of jobs involved—it is unclear how many are new hires versus relocations or backfill—are a fraction of Lockheed's roughly 105,000-person workforce.
Yet it is what President Donald Trump wants to see—and where—and a result of record national security spending of $750 billion annually under his administration that includes new technology priorities such as hypersonics. Not surprisingly, Alabama's powerful Republican Senate appropriator Richard Shelby and Gov. Kay Ivey as well as Lockheed Chairman, CEO and President Marillyn Hewson and officials from the Air Force, Army and Navy made sure to be in Courtland for the public relations event Sept. 16.
In 2016, Trump campaigned with a promise to provide a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to upgrade America. Roads, bridges and airports featured prominently. After he took office, Trump latched on to a contentious Republican proposal to outsource FAA air traffic control, which the White House called the cornerstone of his infrastructure push. All of it died legislatively. But before Democrats or others try to score points over the failure, they should understand Trump has still delivered.
The truth is that Trump's defense spending and government support of commercial aviation and space are today's equivalent of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. They have been what passes for infrastructure spending, just without roads, bridges and airports. Increasingly, the employment figures are adding up, and so are the beneficiaries such as Courtland.
The U.S. aerospace and defense (A&D) industry was responsible for more than 2.56 million jobs in 2018, a 5.5% gain over 2017, thanks primarily to a return to growth across the top tier and supply chain, according to September statistics from the Aerospace Industries Association.
The trade association says A&D accounted for 20% of all U.S. manufacturing jobs and paid nearly $237 billion in wages and benefits last year, up 7.72% from 2017. In 2018, the average wage of an A&D worker was $92,742, an increase of 1.36%. That made the average A&D salary 87% higher than the national average salary of a U.S. worker.
Hewson promises to hire thousands of workers, almost all in the U.S. “Roughly 93% of our employees are U.S.-based, as are 93% of our 16,000 suppliers, making Lockheed Martin a proud driver of broad-based economic development and opportunity in America,” the company says. A map of employment shows the company has at least 100 employees in half of the 50 states.
This is the story across the industry, which is the model for farming taxpayer-funded work across the states in order to build political coalitions to support major A&D programs. On the same day of the Courtland event, Northrop Grumman unveiled its industry team bidding for the Ground-based Strategic Deterrent, including a contractor army of more than 10,000 people in at least 32 states.
But all good things come to an end, and warnings are emerging that A&D's infrastructure-like run could sunset. “Trump is now in full ‘2020-reelection mode,' with continued 2022-26 defense funding growth rapidly becoming a secondary issue,” notes longtime defense consultant Jim McAleese. He points to a Sept. 9 rally in North Carolina at which Trump characterized the “rebuilding” of the U.S. military as “complete.”
This can matter a lot to communities where federal A&D spending is focused. The Pentagon began to push out information this year to help states and local communities understand how much they depend on defense appropriations.
In a report unveiled March 19 at the Brookings Institution, the Defense Department found the top 10 states by total defense spending received in fiscal 2017 accounted for $239.7 billion of the $407 billion total tracked that year. “There's no obvious correlation of red states or blue states, not that there should be,” noted Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and Brookings analyst.
Officials say communities should plan ahead. “It gets back to the rural areas,” says Patrick O'Brien, director of the Pentagon's Office of Economic Adjustment. “Some rural areas see a lot of defense spending; others do not. Where it is occurring, you probably have a very important facility or you have an important presence. And it's up to these local officials to get a better handle on it.”
https://aviationweek.com/defense/why-federal-ad-spending-modern-interstate-highway-system
October 10, 2024 | International, C4ISR, Security
CISA flags a critical Fortinet flaw under active exploitation. Palo Alto Networks and Cisco also release urgent security patches.
March 11, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — Germans and Americans remain far apart on defense issues, ranging from when to use the military, how much to spend on defense and which country poses a bigger challenge — Russia or China — according to a new study unveiled Monday. “Three years into a turbulent period of American-German relations, with Donald Trump at the helm of American foreign policy and Angela Merkel leading Germany, there continues to be a wide divergence in views of bilateral relations and security policy between the publics of both countries,” said a Pew Research Center study published in cooperation with Koerber Stiftung, a German think tank. The two organizations each polled about 1,000 adults in September 2019 in the United States and Germany. Also included in the data are results from Pew's “global attitudes” survey conducted in both countries during the spring and summer of 2019. The results are unlikely to surprise anyone following trans-Atlantic relations, but they put into perspective why deep-seated differences persist in crafting a more coherent political show of force between the two nations. While roughly 80 percent Americans believe that using military might is sometimes necessary to maintain order in the world, Germans were almost split evenly on the same question, with a slight majority disagreeing. On the question of defending a fellow NATO ally against Russia in the event of a conflict, 6 in 10 Americans said the United States should help, whereas 6 in 10 German respondents said their country should not get involved. At the same time, Germans saw the United States high up in the list of key foreign policy allies, much higher than Americans viewed Germany. Asked to name their most or second-most important partner, 42 percent of Germans mentioned the United Sates, surpassed only by the their top choice of France, at 60 percent. For Americans, the British ranked highest on the same question, at 36 percent, followed by China (23 percent), Canada (20 percent) and Israel (15 percent). “One area of convergence is the broad support in both the U.S. and Germany for more cooperation with France and Japan. And similar majorities in the U.S. and Germany want to cooperate more with China,” the study read. As for cooperation with Russia, “Germans are almost twice as likely as Americans to want greater collaboration,” it added. When it comes to defense spending, 35 percent of Americans felt that Europeans should up their military budget, with 50 percent saying it should stay the same and 9 percent saying it should decrease. In 2017, the share of Americans wanting an increase was 45 percent. In Germany, the acceptance for defense budget increases has grown since 2017, when only 32 percent of those polled voiced support and 50 percent wanted it to remain the same. In 2018, 43 percent of respondents supported an increase. At the mid-February Munich Security Conference, much was made about the European Union's need to “learn to use the language of power,” as Josep Borrell, the bloc's defense and foreign policy chief, put it. That, of course, would cost money. Germans have traditionally frowned upon that kind of talk, though there is an increasing awareness of geopolitical perils in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Jeffrey Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said in an interview last month. “Germany has been able to get by with its rhetorical response to the deteriorating security environment,” he said. “Now it's increasingly obvious that that is no longer enough.” While the country has significantly upped its defense spending, sensitizing the public for operational contributions to Europe's security will be a crucial next step for this government and the next, Rathke argued. The Pew and Koerber figures point to a generational change in the general attitudes of Germans and Americans about one another. “Despite these divergences in opinion, young people in both countries have more positive views of the U.S.-German relationship,” the study read. “In the U.S., for example, 82 percent of people ages 18 to 29 say the relationship is good, compared with 73 percent of those ages 65 and older. Similarly, in Germany, four-in-ten young people say relations with the U.S. are good, compared with only 31 percent of those 65 and older.” Notably, the two countries' militaries enjoy a much closer level of cooperation than the political discourse suggests, especially during the Trump administration, a fact that officials in both countries keep stressing when the tone between Berlin and Washington turns particularly icy. “There is an instinctive perception in the German public to defense matters anchored in Europe and the trans-Atlantic alliance,” Rathke said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/03/09/poll-germans-americans-far-apart-on-use-of-military-defense-spending/
April 25, 2019 | International, Aerospace
Les tests des cinq avions de combat en lice pour remplacer les Tiger et les F/A-18 de l'armée suisse ont débuté. L'Eurofighter d'Airbus a ouvert le bal vendredi sur la base aérienne de Payerne (VD). Outre l'Eurofighter, quatre autres concurrents sont en lice: le Gripen E suédois (Saab), le Rafale français (Dassault) ainsi que les deux avions américains, le successeur du F/A-18, le Super Hornet de Boeing, et le F-35A de Lockheed-Martin. L'ordre de passage des candidats a été fixé par ordre alphabétique des constructeurs. Quatre jours de tests sont prévus pour chacun. Tous les candidats ont les mêmes chances. Aucun choix préalable n'a été effectué et pour l'instant, les avions ne seront pas comparés entre eux. Cette phase interviendra lors du deuxième appel d'offres, avait indiqué lundi Christian Catrina, délégué de la cheffe du Département fédéral de la défense pour le projet d'achat des avions de combat. Vérifier les capacités L'objectif de ces tests est de vérifier les capacités des avions et les données des offres déposées par les différents constructeurs. Les essais incluent huit missions comportant des t'ches spécifiques. Effectuées par un ou deux avions de combat, ces missions consisteront en 17 décollages et atterrissage. Elles seront axées sur les aspects opérationnels, les aspects techniques et les caractéristiques particulières. Un vol d'introduction aura lieu avant les essais en vol et au sol pour permettre aux pilotes étrangers de se familiariser avec l'espace aérien suisse. Les missions seront effectuées en solo par un pilote étranger pour le F-35A et le Gripen E qui sont des monoplaces, avait précisé armasuisse. Un ingénieur suisse accompagnera les autres vols. Les évaluations se feront ensuite gr'ce aux enregistrements à bord. La procédure garantit un traitement objectif et identique de tous les candidats. Le choix du modèle se fera sur des bases équitables. Les tests concernent aussi les audits de support produits, les essais en simulateur et les essais au sol en Suisse. https://www.lematin.ch/suisse/test-futurs-avions-combat-commence/story/14127523