Defense Braces for a Bad Decade

The mayor of Huntsville, Ala. (aka "Rocket City") has put a premium on diversifying an economic base heavily dependent on the space and defense industries. Since the recession his "Energy Huntsville" program has worked to build an energy business base linked to education and trai...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Foreign Policy in Focus 2013, p.N_A
Main Author: Pemberton, Miriam
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Defense contracts
Defense industry
Defense spending
Diversification
Economic impact
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The mayor of Huntsville, Ala. (aka "Rocket City") has put a premium on diversifying an economic base heavily dependent on the space and defense industries. Since the recession his "Energy Huntsville" program has worked to build an energy business base linked to education and training. A new nonprofit, Nexus Energy Center, has partnered with a local technical college to train 200 students in renewable energy installation skills. It's a start. Like Bath's, in Maine. Bath Iron Works (BIW), Maine's largest employer, has spent several decades deriving most of its revenue building and maintaining destroyers for the Navy. Maine's Republican senator, Susan Collins, worries about BIW's "reliance on having just one customer...It is important," she says, "that BIW diversify its workload." Bath has begun to do so by participating in the DeepCWind consortium, whose goal is the development of a fully functioning deepwater floating wind energy project offthe Maine coast. In 2011 the company characterized this effort as "fill[ing] the gaps in our workload" but never "equal[ing] the volume of work in a naval surface."
ISSN:1524-1939