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Richard Michalski: U.S. defense industry in crisis

Richard Michalski  —  5/11/2008 7:13 am

Dear Editor: In their May 5 column predicting either the nationalization or outsourcing of our defense manufacturing industry ("Little Choice on U.S. Weapons"), Mr. Zakheim and Mr. Kadish failed to realize that the Air Force has already gone one step worse, outsourcing the $35 billion tanker contract to the nationalized European defense giant EADS.

Of course, in order to deflect such criticism, EADS went out and hired Northrop as a front group, as they do many other PR groups in this city. But EADS isn't fooling anyone as to who's in charge: Northrop hasn't been a prime contractor on an aircraft since the B-2 bomber over a decade ago, when it only produced 21 aircraft in under 10 years and hardly had a significant assembly line. Northrop has neither a tanker production line nor an appropriately trained work force: Northrop won't be involved in production until the very end, effectively outsourcing some 44,000 jobs to EADS' European production lines.

Given that the U.S.'s highly skilled aerospace work force is the envy of the world, this is hardly about protectionism; the Boeing-built KC-767 fleet would save taxpayers as much as $50 billion in fuel and maintenance costs, can offload more fuel, land in more airfields, and was not, like EADS/Northrop's KC-30, built with illegal subsidies. The Air Force even exempted EADS/Northrop from laws that prevent export of sensitive anti-missile technologies to countries such as Iran.

Congress needs to wake up: The U.S. defense industry crisis has already arrived.

Richard Michalski

general vice president

International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers

Upper Marlboro, Md.

Richard Michalski  —  5/11/2008 7:13 am