Industrial Base on the Edge

摘要

Budget sequestration is pummeling the defense industrial base, accelerating its contraction. Continuing uncertainty about defense spending and the evaporation of new programs mean more layoffs and hiring freezes are coming. The US could lose its combat edge in some critical areas of designing and manufacturing unless action is taken, but with little money to spend, the Pentagon must be extremely selective in how and when it will intervene to save crucial suppliers. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, laying out sequestration's consequences in a late July press conference, said if the spending limits roll on into Fiscal 2014-which starts this month-they would trigger "a decade-long modernization holiday." The US military would not be able to replace obsolete or worn-out systems, "many of which are already near the end of their service lives," Hagel said, and the nation could soon find itself overmatched by better-equipped adversaries. "We ... have to consider how massive cuts to procurement and research and development funding would impact the viability of America's private-sector industrial base," he warned.