Defense Firms Hide Many Flaws Behind Solid Financial Metrics

• While discussing their annual Top-Performing Companies (TPC) study, AviationWeek and PWC echo concerns voiced here at DID last month:

“Another troubling sign is that half of the world’s 10 highest-ranked defense-oriented operating units saw defense-related revenues decline. Profit growth in the face of flat or declining revenue is all but unsustainable, and so the issue for prime contractors is where to find – or how to create – a new or improved engine for revenue growth.”

• The GAO reminds the rest of the federal government that regardless of its support for alternative jet fuels, “long-term commercial viability hinges on market factors.” The US Department of Defense, mostly through the Air Force and more recently the Navy, is keen to use alternative fuels to increase energy independence. But are they fully factoring in the likely impact on global food prices of mass fuel production from crops, and their second-order effects on global security? This debate seems to have faded away before it was truly settled.

• The US Coast Guard is organizing an industry day on June 5 in Washington, DC to discuss a broad range of requirements coming in FY15.

• The Idaho National Laboratory awarded contracts to Real Time Logic, L-3 Communications, Cubic, BAE and Rockwell Collins for the first phase of a program to make the Common Data Link (CDL) available for small UAS such as the Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (STUAS).