Supporting the vital defense industrial base

The growing number and complexity of global threats coupled with continuing tight budgets are putting increased pressure on the nation’s defense industrial base to do more with less. At the same time, there is a growing demand for talent and resources in this vital sector, with an expanding need for speed and flexibility.

A healthy manufacturing and defense industry is essential to the nation’s economic strength and security. The defense industrial base must be able to maintain military readiness and support emergency responses around the globe. Recognizing these essential roles, in July, the White House ordered a nine-month government-wide study to identify and address gaps in the nation’s defense industrial needs and capacity. The number of American factories has declined by 60,000 since 2000, with a corresponding loss in the skilled workforce – threatening the nation’s ability to “create, maintain, protect, expand or restore capabilities essential for national security.”

Spirit AeroSystems is committed to bringing its extensive manufacturing capabilities, highly skilled workforce and nine decades of experience in aircraft innovation, design and manufacturing to support the critical defense aviation sector.

Enabling the defense industrial base

A renewed commitment to defense spending will not eliminate the need or expectation for the military to operate as efficiently and as cost-effectively as possible. However, constantly changing threats require rapid and flexible responses by military forces. This response depends on industry’s ability to quickly and affordably bring to market the innovative products to support the military’s mission.

The defense industrial base cannot fully succeed in this environment as a standalone sector separate from the commercial sector. Organizations devoted exclusively to government and military requirements often do not have the scale and flexibility needed to respond to today’s conditions. While the military will always have unique requirements, it must also leverage the ability of the commercial sector to rapidly innovate and adapt to changing conditions. The experience of companies competing to quickly bring new products to market and to continuously update them can provide the flexibility the military needs.

Spirit has 90 years of success in both defense and the competitive commercial environment and brings its experience to the high end of the defense aviation value chain. The Spirit team delivers not only its structural and system installation design and manufacturing capabilities, but also its research and development expertise in advanced composites and innovative fabrication methods.

Size and scale

Because defense-only organizations focus on a relatively small market, they often lack the ability to quickly shift gears and produce innovative solutions in design, development and fabrication. Spirit offers one million square feet of manufacturing facilities in Wichita, Kan., together with a skilled workforce experienced in problem solving.

As one of the world’s largest tier-one aircraft structures suppliers with experience in adapting modern composite materials for use in aerostructure manufacturing, Spirit provides the industrial size and scale to enable rapid development, design and prototyping, and innovative manufacturing processes. These capabilities are more crucial than ever when the military is being tasked with doing more with less and responding rapidly to new threats.

This experience was brought to bear by Spirit on the U.S. Marine Corps’ CH-53K King Stallion heavy lift helicopter program and the U.S. Army’s new V-280 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft.

Spirit is participating in the design and development of both of these next-generation vertical lift aircraft. Working with Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky, Spirit is producing system demonstration fuselages for the CH-53K, manufacturing the cockpit and cabin from lightweight composite materials and assembling the complete fuselage. Bell Helicopter is developing the revolutionary V-280 vertical take-off vehicle, which will combine the best features of a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft. Spirit was able to go from design the delivery of a prototype of the V-280 in just 22 months.

A long-term commitment

Although there is growing need for speed and agility, the defense industrial sector operates with a long-time horizon that requires a long-term commitment. Contract award and funding, requirements development, and design approval can all be lengthy processes. This pace puts a premium on rapid operation once a program is under way, but also requires the willingness and ability to commit resources to the program for a period of years or even decades.

Spirit’s commitment to the defense industry is long-term. It has demonstrated its willingness and ability to spend the time needed to add value to the defense industrial base by using its size, reliability and flexibility to help the U.S. military do more with less, and do it more efficiently.