Business: Aerospace: End of the Gravy Years

(3 of 3)

The aerospace companies are banking on new Government contracts to set production lines humming again. The largest single award in the offing is for the BIA bomber. Boeing, North American Rockwell and General Dynamics are competing. The Air Force wants 240 B-lA's, at a total cost of between $11.8 billion and $12.6 billion. But Congress is already disenchanted with cost overruns on the C-5A transport. And as long as there remains a possibility of some agreement with the Soviet Union on strategic-arms limitation, there remains some doubt that Congress will vote money to build the B-lA. Among other contracts in the offing are: a new "freedom fighter" for export to allied nations, the Safeguard anti-missile program, a new submarine-launched missile, a land-based missile to replace the Minuteman, and the space shuttle.

Only a few years ago, none of that work would have been seriously questioned. The aerospace industry grew to its present size in response to Washington's demands during the cold war and the race to the moon. Now, the companies and their laid-off employees are unhappily adjusting to a switch in national priorities that they could not have foreseen. The U.S. still needs an innovative and relatively large aerospace industry. Yet the overriding new concern with social needs and the environment makes it unlikely that the industry will regain the pre-eminence that it enjoyed as recently as two years ago.