New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
State’s defense industry in demand
HARTFORD — Leaders from the state’s Big 3 defense and aerospace contractors said Friday that they face an unprecedented rush to develop next-generation technologies to remain competitive at home while enabling the U.S. military to maintain its strategic advantages abroad.
The new machinery being sought from companies with Connecticut ties include lightweight aircraft engines that can travel longer distances, nuclear submarines that never need to be refueled and faster attack-reconnaissance helicopters.
Representatives from Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and Electric Boat said Friday the need for such advanced technology is being spurred by a realignment of the U.S. military’s focus from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to “peer adversaries” such as Russia and China. Executives from the companies spoke at a global security forum in Hartford hosted by the World Affairs Council of Connecticut, which continues Saturday.
Competition with China, in particular, has put pressure on U.S. companies to produce new technologies at a breakneck pace, Thomas Prete, the Pratt & Whitney vice president of engineering, told an online and in-person audience.
“The timeline of where they are is much further along than anybody ever thought and their trajectory to catch up is unprecedented,” Prete said. For companies like Pratt, a division of Raytheon Technologies, he added, “it’s about going faster.”
“We can't take eight years
to design a new fighter engine. We’ve got to do it in half the time and in half the budget.”
Connecticut’s historic manufacturers of submarines and helicopters described facing similar demands.
Electric Boat, for example, was once relied upon to build one submarine a year at its shipyard in Groton, or even less than one a year, the company’s chief information officer, Ken Jeanos, said Friday. Now, the company has orders to produce two Virginia-class attack submarines each year and recently began production on its Columbia-class of ballistic missile submarines
, replacing the old Trident subs.
That brings annual output to three ships at EB, a unit of General Dynamics.
At Sikorsky, Vice President of Enterprise Business Transformation Mike Ambrose said the company, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, had invested over $1 billion to develop Future Vertical Lift technology aircraft for the U.S. Army. That includes the X2 helicopter as an eventual replacement for the Black Hawk, the workhorse of the defense fleet.
“When you start to look at how the mission’s evolved, aircraft have to go faster, they have to go furtracts
ther, they have to be more supportable, they also have to be more connected,” Ambrose said, to far-flung bases.
The output of Connecticut’s three largest defense contractors, in addition to a web of more than 700 suppliers in the state, make Connecticut the sixth-largest recipient of defense spending in 2019, according to the Department of Defense.
That year the total number of defense contracts awarded to companies in the state reached its highest level in decades, according to a report by the state’s office of military affairs.
The $37.1 billion in con
awarded to companies in the state that year was led by Navy’s largestever shipbuilding contract with Electric Boat to build nine Virginia-class submarines, as well as billions more for Pratt & Whitney to develop engines for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and for Sikorsky to build dozens of helicopters, including the new, heavy-lift CH-53K
King Stallion.
Outside experts said this week that defense spending was likely to remain robust in the future as the military seeks new hardware.
“There is a shift away from the kind of conflicts we’ve seen, or equipping for the kind of conflicts we’ve seen over the past couple decades,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group in Virginia. “Hunting guerrillas, basically, counterinsurgency warfare and back towards actual big, peer-adversary standoffs. It’s completely different equipment, completely different procurement.”
Another development that experts said could have ramifications in Connecticut was the controversial recent deal between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia to share nuclear submarine technology, scuttling the latter country’s deal to purchase diesel submarines from France.
Jeanos, the CIO from Electric Boat, was asked about the development, known as AUKUS, on Friday but said it was too early for the company to say what its involvement will be.
“We will offer to be a participant that assists,” Jeanos said. “But as of right now, really, our focus is the demand that’s been brought upon ourselves by the U.S. Navy.”
Richard Pettibone, senior government and industry analyst at Forecast International, said agreements such as the submarine deal with the Australians reflected a larger pivot toward “conventional” defense strategies that would likely be a boon for Connecticut contractors.
“They're going to keep humming right along because the need for defense has just continued to be at the forefront of our policy,” Pettibone said. “I don’t see any change coming because it just seems like the world is getting more and more bellicose.”