Mary-Louise Hoffman
Ellen Lord, CEO of Textron Systems, believes the U.S. defense industry’s future growth lies in efforts to make incremental investments that could offer contractors a step change in technology modernization, Defense News reported Tuesday.
Paul McCleary writes Lord highlighted the challenges and opportunities for industry amid federal spending uncertainty in a speech at the Association of the United States Army conference last week in Washington.
She said the U.S. Army has been supportive of local defense companies and foreign military customers.
“There’s a realization that [foreign sales] helps support our domestic defense industrial base and that in turn helps the U.S. Army,†she told forum audience.
Lord expects the Pentagon’s new acquisition strategy to help vendors secure more government contracts and stop extreme risk aversion within the sector.
“The slowdown doesn’t help any of us, so what I’m hoping is that the implication of Better Buying Power 3.0 is crisply and efficiently done,” she added, according to Defense News.
She also urged the federal government to introduce measures to increase the number of homegrown skilled professionals across the industry.
