The Farnborough Aerospace Consortium is this week launching an online, free-to-use UK Aerospace and Defence Capabilities database of some 800 firms. The site, says FAC chief executive John Copley, is a "one-stop window" for the UK's "highly capable SMEs".
Copley and his team will be demonstrating the site - www.ukadcap.org.uk - on the FAC stand at the UK village in Hall 1.
Meanwhile, Copley reckons the small- to medium-sized enterprises that make up most of the aerospace industry in the south east of England have weathered the recession. But these firms are also bracing for a "painful" couple of years as the UK government looks set to slash defence spending.
Copley, who adds that a "surprising number" of businesses are reporting record years for 2009 and that the space business should do "quite nicely", expects the cash-strapped UK government's review of defence spending to come down hard on firms across the country if, or when, procurement programmes get the axe.
However, he says the south east is not especially exposed to any one programme, in part because it's a region of small firms with no major, single-company sites.
But while the UK defence procurement environment is bound to change radically following the government's spending review, initiating a period of difficulty for firms large and small, Copley reckons the impending earthquake could end up heralding a new era of business development for SMEs.
The opportunity, he forecasts, will be for SMEs to do more business directly with the Ministry of Defence, which, he says, is known to be interested in expanding its links to a sector that, at present, directly receives only a few per cent of the MoD's procurement budget.
There will be no "overnight" change, he says, but to cut through some of the bureaucracy that characterises defence procurement, the speed and agility of SMEs should be seen as an advantage.
A successful defence spending review must start with a "foreign policy-led review" of the UK's role in the world and, thus, its military requirements. There must be a "resetting of expectations" based on reality today.
Then, says Copley, new expectations must drive a resetting of budgets to undo years of spending "creep" into unrealistic positions.
If this process is transparent to industry, then companies will be able to plan their long-term priorities.
Winners will be those firms that can manage the transition from supplying big, Cold War-style weapons to working in the homeland security space that characterises much military activity today.
Source: Flight Daily News