“I’m worried about the
industrial base,” Pentagon Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Chief Frank
Kendall said last week. Speaking at the COMDEF 2014 conference in Washington, D.C.,
on Sept. 3, Kendall said he’s been meeting with industry leaders about how to
preserve “key suppliers” and design teams—particularly in “high performance
aircraft” and ship design—after the current backlog of programs has been worked
off. He’s not “terribly worried about
the financial health of the industry” because the defense budget will still be
large, and the “bigger firms will be fine,” but he frets about the small and
“niche” businesses “that are very sensitive to the level of business that they
receive.” He’s said previously that as budgets decline, and there are longer
gaps between programs, small companies may not be able to wait for the next
order of specialty items. While he’s resolved that, “We will try to take
action,” Kendall said the Pentagon’s flexibility to do so “is … going to be
very limited” because of the limited funding available. He’ll also be trying to
lure commercial vendors who don’t normally do defense work into the system, “so
we can capitalize on those.” (See also
Kendall:
Air Force POM “Balanced” and
Other
Services Hanging on Too Tight)