The defense industry still lives in a cocoon

Last year the Aerospace Industries Association took aim at the budget sequester on behalf of its members and mounted a visible and expensive campaign to prevent it. They ran out a study done by Steven Fuller showing that sequestration would lead to a million jobs lost and trigger a recession in some regional economies, like Virginia.

AIA issued alarmist statements and press releases about the coming economic doom. Their chorus was joined by Senators campaigning hard against the sequester, like Sen. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Lindsey Graham. It was quite a road show.

In the front of the cheering section last year was Lockheed Martin CEO Bob Stevens, who warned, at the time, that sequester would lead to 10,000 layoffs at his large defense contracting company. He announced the intention of issuing WARN Act notices, which would let employees know their jobs would soon be in jeopardy.

Stevens left at the end of 2012, having withdrawn the WARN threat, but the recent comments that the new CEO, Marilyn Hewson, made to Politico suggest that the apple of corporate leadership has not fallen far from the tree.

So far Lockheed and Hewson say 50 employees have been affected by sequestration, and their major programs — the F-35 and the Littoral Combat ship, among others — have not been much affected. Hewson argues there could be worse to come, but DOD has still not provided detailed guidance for the industry.

It seems that CEO Hewson lives in the same echo chamber Stevens created last year. According to the Politico story, it is still the same scary world out there, with the same budget uncertainties and threat to the future of her industry that her predecessor described.

The world, she tells Politico, is a frightening place: "Abroad, new threats are rising, even as old threats become more menacing. Iran, we know, edges closer to nuclear statehood, and North Korea has already achieved it. The list of threats goes on and on."

Wait, "on and on"? So far she has listed two "threats," both old and well-known, and neither of which is more threatening to our security because of anything the sequester might cause in the Defense Department. I am curious to see what the "on and on" is about.

Does she mean China, toward which we are supposedly already pivoting and whose capabilities are far below ours? Does she mean "cyber warriors," who may be a problem, but are irrelevant to 95 percent or more of our military capability? What’s the list? And is it real?

Or is a defense industry CEO whipping up a fervor encouraged by the community that lives in that fear stovepipe, but doesn’t have a grip on what is going on in the rest of the world?

And then, there is that budget world, equally, if not more threatening, according to Hewson. Her predecessor, she said, was just campaigning for clarity last year, not playing politics. Let that rest; it was an election year and there is no such campaign going on this year.

But calling for guidance today suggests that Hewson is out of touch with what has actually happened as sequester has been announced and implemented. Someone should brief the CEO. Last year OMB provided two sets of guidance, making it clear that the major impacts of sequester would be felt in the operational accounts at DOD. Not in the acquisition accounts, which is where the vast bulk of Lockheed’s business lies.

The reason Lockheed has only laid off 50 people is because its programs are not experiencing the hurt. Federal employees are, as the secretary of defense made clear on May 12 — nearly 700,000 of them will get 11 unpaid days between now and the end of September (and maybe next year, too, if there is no budget agreement).

But the "memo" to industry about the sequester has always been that contract dollars are not affected as quickly, because the dollars already committed to contracts were not sequestered under the law. Makes sense the near-term impact would be minimal, although the defense industry and Bob Stevens were screaming louder than anyone.

Maybe what she is really worried about is not the sequester, but what is happening to the defense budget in general. We are in an obvious drawdown, long-term, and drawdowns affect everyone, including industry, because procurement dollars go down even more deeply than the overall budget. (They are already down more than 20 percent since FY 2010, while the overall budget, pre-sequester, is down only 10 percent in constant dollars.)

Industry leaders should get with this program, and many (even Lockheed) have begun to do so. But instead of wasting valuable time complaining about guidance and arousing fear, it would be good for long-term business to focus on this reality and plan accordingly.