Orange County Has Big Stake in Weapons Parley : Defense Meeting Opens Today in El Toro
Most industry groups tout their wares in a holiday atmosphere inside cavernous convention centers. Today, behind the barbed wire fences of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, a different kind of trade fair begins--an exclusive and highly classified conference that will help chart the course for the nation’s defense industry, including scores of companies and tens of thousands of aerospace workers in Orange County.
WINCON, held for three days each winter in sunny Orange County, is attracting about 300 defense industry and Pentagon officials and about four times as many anti-nuclear protesters. The conference, sponsored by electronics manufacturers and hosted by the U.S. government, is one of a series of closed-door briefings held throughout the nation to explain the Pentagon’s weaponry needs and desires to the companies that build the country’s defense arsenal.
“It’s a chance for us to learn how the Department of Defense sees the threats to our national security and what the national policies are to offset those threats,” explained David Graham, manager of the market planning research analysis group at Ford Aerospace and Communications Corp. in Newport Beach and a regular participant at the WINCON conference.
“The bottom line,” he added, “is that it helps us position ourselves to sell to the government.”
And that means big business for Orange County.
According to the Department of Defense, Orange County aerospace businesses received military contracts valued at $3.1 billion in the fiscal year ended September, 1983--50% more than its $2-billion share of the defense pie in 1981. Defense contract spending represents nearly 8% of the $39.6 billion in goods and services produced countywide last year, according to estimates by the Center for Economic Research at Chapman College.
The state Employment Development Department reports that nearly 9% of the county’s 942,000 civilian workers are employed by aerospace companies, with about half working directly on defense-funded projects. Aerospace employment last year, which reached a record of about 85,000, was nearly 40% greater than in 1977.
Like its neighboring counties to the north and south, Orange County has received a growing chunk of military contracts for the last 35 years and has spun out a variety of technological advances considered critical to the nation’s defense. Defense industry analysts say the concentration of research-oriented, high-technology companies in Orange County has given it a greater share of the military build-up under the Reagan Administration than other areas of the country. And if President Reagan’s pet “Star Wars” project is approved, several local companies, already researching satellite-based radar systems, are well poised to capture some of the business.
“There’s no question that defense spending is pretty damned important to Orange County’s economy,” noted Robert Hanisee, an analyst with Amdec Securities Corp., a Los Angeles brokerage house. “The county literally has dozens of companies relying on government work for their existence.”
Hughes Aircraft, by far the county’s largest defense contractor with $1.15 billion in defense sales last year, manufactures missile launching controls for the Trident submarine and has nearly 60 other military projects housed in its Fullerton Ground Systems group.
Ford Aerospace has delivered more than 100,000 guidance and control systems for the Sidewinder missile over the last 30 years. It also is in the midst of building 146 tank-mounted, anti-aircraft guns in its embattled Sgt. York program.
The anti-aircraft system, plagued by performance and production problems, has been criticized by a variety of government agencies, including Army officials who have questioned whether the gun works. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger is expected to decide as early as this spring whether to cancel the program, which employs 1,800 workers in Orange County.
Rockwell International Corp. employs about 2,100 workers to design and develop guidance and control systems for the MX missile and nearly 300 workers to research sensor and data collection technology not dissimilar to what Reagan wants for the “Star Wars” program
And those are just the big companies. Literally dozens more, from Helionetics, which produces lasers and power transformers, to tiny Irvine Sensors Corp. in Costa Mesa, which researches “eye-in-the-sky” heat-sensing, infra-red devices, are receiv ing a share of the Pentagon budget.
The concentration of defense spending in Southern California--Los Angeles County received $13.1 billion in defense contracts in 1983 and San Diego another $2 billion--is precisely the reason anti-nuclear protesters say they have singled out the WINCON conference for their pickets and vigils.
WINCON, unlike other Pentagon briefings held across the nation, has been picketed and protested since 1979 by members of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker movement and, more recently, the Alliance for Survival.
“We consider it a nuclear Tupperware show without public dialogue,” said Tim Carpenter of the Alliance for Survival.
Although defense contracting is a major factor in the county’s economy, it is not the overriding force it was two decades ago when 18% of the county’s work force was employed by aerospace contractors. And analysts say this isimportant for stability.
“One of Orange County’s strengths today is the diversification of the work force,” said Alta Yetter, an analyst for the state Employment Development Department in Santa Ana. “Today we are less dependent on aerospace and hence less prone to suffer its traditional boom-bust cycle.”
Still, James Doti, director of Chapman College’s Center for Economic Research, estimates that scaling down by 5% Reagan’s proposed defense spending for fiscal year 1986 would mean the direct loss of about 2,500 jobs within the county.
But more likely, say some industry analysts, is an increase in Orange County’s defense-related jobs because of the concentration of high-tech companies.
“This is a technology-driven build-up,” explained Christopher Demish, an aerospace analyst with First Boston Co. in New York. “And areas with high concentrations of high-tech companies are the winners.”
