Defense industry gets reinvigorated - In Los Angeles County, 2,200 new aerospace jobs will be created in 2003
After years of cutbacks, work on major defense programs such as the F/A-22 Raptor and the F-35 are bringing much-needed job growth to Southern California’s aerospace industry. (Both have Lockheed Martin Corp. as their prime contractor.)
In Los Angeles County, an estimated 2,200 new aerospace jobs will be created this year, bringing the total to 108,600, according to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.
That’s nowhere near the 1986 peak of 289,900 jobs. But it does mark the first year-to-year increase since 1996-1997.
“Aerospace-defense is back but in a different way,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. “We’ve lost most of the assembly lines. But in terms of subcontract work and advanced research and development, we’re still incredibly strong.”
Industry shift
L.A. is no longer a hub for prime contract work on military aircraft. The C-17 and smaller Global Hawk unmanned aerial reconnaissance plane are the only two planes assembled here. The 13,000 workers that once toiled on Northrop’s 21 B-2 Bombers in Palmdale has dwindled to 1,000 maintenance workers.
But after fighter jet programs by Lockheed Martin in Burbank and Rockwell International in El Segundo dried up, what remained were research facilities: Cal Tech, the Los Angeles Air Force Base, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In Palmdale, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and Boeing’s Phantom Works also were kept on.
The decade-long transformation into an R&D hub has shown dividends.
“It’s hard to say somebody planned it,” said Philip Coyle, a senior advisor for the Washington-based Center For Defense Information, a research and policy group. “It just evolved that way. It’s the result of decades of investment in defense science and technology.”
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there’s been a massive increase in defense spending — $382.2 billion for the year ending in September 2003 vs. $328.9 in fiscal 2002.
For political reasons, defense program work is notorious for being spread out across the 50 states. But other factors have given Los Angeles an outsized share of the pie, offsetting losses on the commercial side of the business.
One factor is the presence of Northrop Grumman, the major defense player that’s been winning significant roles in virtually every new defense program.
The other is an infrastructure that, despite lean times, never really went away.
“There’s a unique aerospace manufacturing capability that exists here in the Southland and always has,” said Gene Price, chief executive of Brek, which draws 70 percent of its $24.8 million in annual revenues from defense and aerospace work.
“Most of the service-related support services — painting, parts processing, metal cutting, metal forming — is here. If my company was in Nevada or Arizona, I’d have to come to L.A. because those types of services are not readily available there,” Price said.
The Raptor will employ 250 L.A.-area subcontractors and suppliers, accounting for 65 percent of the plane’s contents.
Plans call for 18 Raptors to be constructed this year, up from seven last year, while the first Joint Strike Fighter test model will begin production by the end of the year while systems engineering and design work is in full steam.