Grundman Cited In Defense News, “Blurred Lines: Commercial, Defense Sectors Begin To Blend”
“Those who watch the industry agree: Change is coming, and companies that don’t react appropriately could get left behind. ‘As a generalization, the defense industry and the defense industrial base would be well served by an industry whose structure had more exposure to commercial markets and commercial technologies than our mostly pure-play [defense] companies that comprise the top tier of the industrial structure today have,’ said Steven Grundman, a former Pentagon industrial policy chief now with the Atlantic Council. He warns that the days of pure defense firms are endangered. ‘Being a pure-play defense company works great when the defense budget is growing at 6 to 8 percent a year, but the other side of that coin is that when growth stops, you’re fully exposed to a flat market,’ Grundman said. ‘I don’t think there is as much room in the healthy defense industrial structure for pure-play defense companies as we have today. As a matter of corporate strategy I think all the companies ought to be looking for smart ways of diversifying,’ he said.”
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