Professor: GE needs to look to high-tech in face of possible force cuts

LYNN – General Electric and other defense firms can weather plans to strip down the U.S. Army?s size if they look over the horizon to a new age in military planning dominated by high technology, a Boston University professor said Tuesday.?The last place we?re going to cut back is high technology,” said Navy veteran and BU International Relations Department faculty member Michael Corgan.Top Defense Department officials are contemplating Army force reductions from 522,000 soldiers to 490,000 by 2015 with additional reductions under consideration, the Associated Press reported in February.What those potential cuts mean to weapons and equipment manufacturers is a question not lost on GE, said River Works spokesman Richard Gorham. The T700 military helicopter engine is produced by Lynn?s biggest employer.?It is something we are monitoring closely and working through,” Gorham said.River Works has felt the weight of federal “sequestration” spending cutbacks in 2013 and this year, along with what Gorham called “Department of Defense budget constraints.” He said the cuts have “taken some volume and hours from our manufacturing shops,” but a spokesman for U.S. Rep. John Tierney on Tuesday said a new-generation rescue helicopter program could be good news for GE.The U.S. Air Force is “repurposing $430 million in Fiscal Year 2014 funding for the Combat Rescue Helicopter,” Tierney spokesman Daniel Rubin stated, noting Tierney signed a letter last December urging Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to support the helicopter program.?We are now pressing to make sure as much of this work as possible is done in Lynn,” stated Rubin.Corgan said advanced technology, especially precision weapon advances allowing targets to be hit accurately, parallel reductions in the Army?s size and signal a farewell to bygone military strategies that required large forces concentrating enormous firepower on enemy targets.?People like General Electric are just going to have to rethink what they are doing,” Corgan said.Rubin stated that Congress intends “over the coming weeks” to scrutinize force reduction proposals with an eye on how they underscore “the best military and national strategic interests.”Gorham said GE – even in the face of defense spending cutbacks – looks for opportunities to sell T700 engines “in the international and commercial markets.”