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April 2007

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Military Industry Confidential

By Lee Siu hin
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E very year in Washington, DC, there’s a four-day U.S. Missile Defense Conference and Exhibit organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) to promote the missile defense program. While the conference will be happening in the middle of the busy city, it’s a secret conference only people with security clearance can attend. The Missile Defense Conference is just one of hundreds of weapon conferences/meetings/workshops happening every year. Organized by such Pentagon departments as the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and by civilian-based aerospace engineer trade associations like AIAA, they are key players in the development of almost every U.S. weapons program. 

Military companies and Pentagon officials acknowledge AIAA’s leadership in the aerospace and weapons industry. With nearly 30,000 members—including aerospace engineers, corporate management, military, intelligence and government officials—it’s a combination engineer’s association, academic research organization, book publisher, think tank, and political lobbying group. Many of AIAA’s academic projects are for civilian purposes—such as commercial aircraft, communication satellites, deep space exploration, and commercial aircraft maintenance. But most other programs are for military purposes—aircraft, spy satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and missile defense programs. AIAA is also a bridge between the Pentagon, MDA, NASA, and military-related industries, such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. 

AIAA has dozens of technical committees. Each committee organizes its own annual technical meeting or national convention to discuss their achievements and political agendas while networking for potential domestic and foreign customers and building lobbying strategies for government funding. 

The March 2007 Missile Defense Conference in DC was organized by AIAA members from the missile systems technical committee. Along with major players at the missile defense programs like David Altwegg, deputy director of MDA, and Jerry Agee, an executive from Northrop Grumman, participants also included Pentagon officials, aerospace engineers, and military contractors. Programs included an interactive two-hour ballistic missile computer-assisted war game to highlight the accomplishments of the missile defense program for the past year. 

The conference was tactically scheduled to be concurrent with Congress’s debate on the military budget. Organizations like AIAA, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the National Defense Industrial Association, along with MDA, have planned dozens of military-weapon conventions and conferences for this spring, launching their biggest lobbying campaign since the Regan era in order to build Congressional and public support for a multi-billion dollar missile defense system and other weapons programs.  

The Fear Factor 

W ith a proposed 11 percent defense budget increase for 2008 and a near record-setting $21 billion in U.S. foreign military sales in 2006, the Pentagon and the military industrial complex are the clear “winners” in the government’s budget process. However, still not satisfied, they are warning that the defense budget will be squeezed by the “big three” government entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—within the next several years when “baby-boomers” begin retiring. 

Not surprisingly, major aerospace industries are also using massive PR campaigns to spread fears about military threats from foreign countries such as Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and Venezuela. Aviation Week & Space Technology and Defense News have been devoting a large amount of coverage in recent issues to the Iran and North Korea threats, advocating that the U.S. spend more money in response. 

A Defense News (2/19) article, with the headline, “China, Iran Top USAF Threat List,”featured an interview with Air Force General T. Michael Moseley who argued that, “These emerging threats require the nation to pay the price to modernize its fleet.” 

Likewise, the so-called grassroots Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA) claims to have over 9,000 memberships in over 30 states. Their board members include a mix of retired generals, corporate lawyers, dot.com entrepreneurs, condominium developers, and the head of a student athlete organization. MDAA published a national opinion poll and found that 79 percent vs. 17 percent of bi-partisan public opinion overwhelmingly supports missile defense and 53 percent vs. 38 percent believes the system is affordable. 

In addition, think thanks like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, known for their right-wing conservative advocacy, are jumping on the bandwagon, helping the military to hard sell the missile defense program to the public, using their conservative fiscal analysis to convince Americans to want more guns and less butter.  

In Missile We Trust? 

S ince the Reagan era, there has been a lot of hype for “missile defense,” while critical information has been withheld from the public. Behind the scenes the research and development has been non-stop, regardless of who’s been in the White House. 

During the 2006 AIAA Missile Defense Conference, Lt. General Trey Obering, director of MDA, envisioned the U.S. needing to spend $9 to $10 billion annually between 2006 and 2010 in order to develop: 

  • up to 50 Ground-Based Interceptors, including 10 in Europe 
  • fully integrated Thule radar at Greenland 
  • 3 Aegis cruisers and 15 Aegis
    destroyers 
  • 81 Standard Missile 3 interceptors 
  • 48 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors 
  • up to 4 forward-based radars 

According to Obering, there are currently at least ten international partners working with the U.S. missile defense program (Japan, the UK, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Spain). Several new potential partnerships include the Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, India, and Taiwan. 

Within the AIAA and aerospace engineering communities many scientists have voiced their doubts about the missile defense program and have sometimes engaged in heated debates during the conference, but Pentagon officials claim these dissenting views are short -sighted. On February 28 Lockheed Martin was awarded an MDA three-year contract worth about $980 million to continue work on the Aegis ballistic missile defense weapon system at their facilities in Bethesda, Maryland and Moorestown, New Jersey.  

Lee Siu Hin is a long-time peace activist, a reporter for Pacifica Radio, and a national coordinator for the Peace No War Network and the National Immigrant Solidarity Network. 
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