Government sequestration in the United States will significantly harm ongoing national defense operations and procurement of new systems needed by warfighters, Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) CEO Marion Blakey said in a statement published earlier this week to promote the organization’s Second to None campaign.
   Blakey said sequestration will not only have disastrous results for the Pentagon’s ability to meet requirements, but also undercut NASA’s and the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Association’s ability to develop new spacecraft and satellites, as well as make air transportation less efficient today and delay the implementation of NextGen in the future.
   “More than a trillion dollars in sequestration budget cuts over nine years can do that to carefully planned national security strategies and government programs,” said Blakey, who added that these risks should be easily understood and considered urgent. “We’ve made a compelling case that if Congress fails to repeal sequestration next year, 2.14 million jobs will be put at risk. The expected growth in GDP could be cut by two-thirds and the economy could very possibly be forced into another recession.”
   Additional sequestration budget cuts during the next eight years, Blakey argues, would also have an equally cascading impact on U.S. economic performance. Though she admits this is a harder point to communicate to Washington, she believes it is no less important, as “revolutionary, life-altering” products developed by researchers in the government and our industry reach into nearly every home in the United States.
   “It bears repeating that the Internet, GPS, solar cells, wind turbine technologies and implantable valves for heart surgery patients are a product of government-aerospace and defense industry innovation,” said Blakey. “Sequestration will inhibit the ability of our nation’s defense, civil space and aviation agencies and the aerospace and defense companies they fund to make the seed corn investments in research and development that lead to innovations that dramatically change our world for the better.”
   The federal government, along with the aerospace industry, have maintained a steady commitment to funding creative research projects, as demonstrated by investments in NASA academic projects and DARPA research initiatives. Blakey said those investigations into practical concerns often lead to unexpected discoveries that are taken for granted along with household devices, transportation and communications tools and medical advances.
   “If you don’t think a long-term commitment to the kind of funding that leads to innovation isn’t important, consider the history of the U.S. automotive industry,” said Blakey. “The Big Three auto companies were the undisputed industry colossuses of the world up until the 1960s. Complacent, these companies cut back on innovation, only to be shocked in a matter of years when innovative cars produced in Japan and elsewhere destroyed our market dominance. Only when Detroit recommitted to innovation did our auto industry come back.”
   Overall, Blakey and AIA lauded the U.S. federal government’s recent funding of research and development, calling it “a smart investment” in the United States’ well being. “Sequestration is bad policy precisely because it would diminish government’s ability to make these investments,” said Blakey.