Impending cuts to the defense budget of some $480 billion over the next decade “will stifle the ability of the defense industry to deliver innovation and urgent wartime capabilities,” warned the Defense Industrial Base Task Force last week. Worse, reductions beyond that, up to the $1 trillion sequestration level outlined in the 2011 Budget Control Act, “would severely damage the defense industrial base as a commercially viable enterprise, as a reliable and responsive provider of urgent wartime needs, and as a national strategic asset that is indispensable to the defense of the United States,” according to the report that the task force publicly released on Jan. 6. “This report paints an alarming picture for the future of the aerospace and defense industry,” said Aerospace Industries Association President Marion Blakey in a release. The report is based on a task force survey of several dozen companies. The task force is comprised of companies from AIA, the National Defense Industrial Association, and Professional Services Council.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…