Options for Reducing US Deficit, Sequestration Pain
* Spend no more than you earn? No, it cannot be so simple. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest assessment [PDF] of how the US government could tackle its fiscal imbalances. This will inform the conference committee currently trying to wrap up the FY2014 budget. The always-hopeful Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget urges them not to use short-term gimmicks to route around sequestration.
* Some Senate Democrats are following the script from House Republican defense hawks by decrying the loss of jobs incurred because of the sequester. John Bennett from Defense News concludes: “Only a few subcommittee members even showed up.”
* It would be nice if the strategy led the budget and not vice versa, but bromides from the top brass are not even internally consistent. If you pay attention, you’ll see them everywhere. When was the future anything but uncertain?
LockMart Cuts
* Lockheed Martin announced they will reduce their workforce by 4,000 people, as well as close operations by mid-2015 in Newtown, PA; Akron, OH; Goodyear, AZ; and Horizon City, TX. this will take their total workforce to about 116,000 people, down from a peak of 146,000 people just 5 years ago.
* Such waves of redundancies may not make the industry look attractive to younger job candidates, as a wave of retirements is set to hit it within a few years.
Strong Growth at EADS, Except Its Military Backlog
* EADS reported Q3 2013 revenue up 11% to 13.63 billion euros ($18.35B). Airbus Military’s sales where twice as high as a year ago, at 702 million euros thanks to A400M deliveries. Net orders for the first 9 months of the year are on the other hand trailing badly, at 8 net orders so far vs. 30 at the same point last year. Their order book thus declined to 20.2 billion euros, down 900 million euros from the end of 2012.
Textron Touts Local Foothold as Key to Exports
* Ellen Lord, CEO of Textron Systems, thinks having a couple of employees set up in local offices will give the company an edge to expand in the Middle East and Asia. She puts the emphasis on finding the right individual with the right skills, starting with speaking the host country’s language. You would think that’s an obvious baseline, but then Walmart infamously appointed a general manager who didn’t speak German to get into [PDF] the German market.
3D Printing Jet Engine Parts
* Rolls-Royce may starting 3D printing small, simple parts in a few years, which would allow faster production and reduce inventories, reports the Financial Times.
And They Want to Buy Chinese?
* Turkey asked NATO to maintain its 6 Patriot batteries deployed at its southern border with Syria.
Belatedly Snubbing Rosoboronexport
* After years of pressure from US lawmakers and international NGOs, the Pentagon decided to stop buying Mi-17 helicopters from Rosoboronexport after those already promised to Afghan forces, though how many will be really delivered in total is not entirely clear. This decision cancels the procurement of an additional 15 helos.
How to Withdraw Out of Afghanistan, Post Iraq
* RAND published a massive volume describing how the US left Iraq, with recommendations for policy makers in charge of planning and executing the exit from Afghanistan.
* One resource likely to see much less use outside of counter-insurgency operations in uncontested airspace is UAVs.
Future of US Naval Operations Under Sequestration
* Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the US Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, recently spoke at the IISS, in the video below: