Grundman Cited In Defense News, “With Aging Platforms, Boeing Looks Abroad”

“Steve Grundman, a Lund Fellow at the Atlantic Council and principal of Grundman Advisory, said agreements like the Embraer deal follow a well-established tactic employed by several other American companies, including Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. It may seem ironic, Grundman acknowledges, that a big American integrator feels compelled to import a platform back into the US market to address an opportunity, but he thinks it simply reflects real-world changes in customer preferences. ‘It is one response to a customer – the Pentagon – that is increasingly unwilling to pay the full development costs for what are essentially mature-type platforms,’ Grundman said. ‘Customers no longer have the time and rich development budgets that would finance an indigenous US company bringing forth a clean-sheet design of aircraft like these for themselves.'”