The defense budget will likely be top of the list of topics Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) President and CEO Marion Blakey and members of the association’s Executive Committee are expected to cover when they meet with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as scheduled for this morning.
“The AIA leadership met with [former Defense Secretary Robert] Gates two times last year continuing that dialogue which we think is very important to have with the government,” said Alexis Allen, an AIA spokeswoman.
At the meeting, reported first last week by Reuters, the dialogue is expected to be important, because there is $350 billion in defense-related cuts coming, and potentially even more as a congressional super committee looks for savings in the federal budget. At the same time, defense companies have also looked to eke out savings in their operations.
Panetta “believes that a strong and healthy defense industrial base is vital to our national security, and that preserving the (Defense) Department’s partnership with industry is a top priority,” his spokesman, George Little, said in a statement. “The secretary will emphasize the need for industry to work with the department to promote the twin imperatives of strong national defense and fiscal discipline. He believes that we can work together effectively to achieve that important outcome.”
The AIA executive committee includes AIA Chairman James Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing [BA] Commercial Aircraft, who runs the committee, to the leaders of Lockheed Martin [LMT], the Pentagon’s number one DoD supplier, to Honeywell [HON], L-3 Communications [LLL], Raytheon [RTN], and General Dynamics [GD] and Northrop Grumman [NOC].
On Wednesday, Blakey, aerospace CEOs, including Albaugh, and others will speak out in an AIA-sponsored event in Washington, D.C., on the devastation that would result from further rounds of defense cuts, discussing the debt supercommittee, national security, and jobs. The event is also part of and National Aerospace Week, which has the goal of highlighting the contributions of the aerospace industry with a series of events across the country. For more information: www.nationalaerospaceweek.org