Eyeing a Bigger Slice of the Defense Pie (Manchester Union Leader)

By DENIS PAISTE
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff

MANCHESTER – A regional effort to boost New England firms' share of federal defense contracts drew support from Gov. John Lynch yesterday during a meeting of business, government and academic leaders at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.

"We have the intellectual capital, we certainly have universities, we have the workforce, and as a region we can compete with any other region in the country," Lynch said.

"We enthusiastically support what you're doing, and we are willing to participate in any way we possibly can," the governor said.

The Waltham, Mass.-based Defense Technology Initiative is a partnership of high-technology business advocacy groups, including the New Hampshire High Technology Council.

Defense-oriented, high-technology companies depend on research and development for their competitive advantage and their products have a high value-added component and are less likely to be manufactured overseas. The company becomes more profitable, it creates jobs and helps with economic development," Lynch said.

Smaller firms, in particular, stand to benefit from the partnership.

"I think it's huge," said Matt Pierson, chairman of the New Hampshire High Technology Council. "It brings people together with other organizations and companies and educational institutions.

"It gives them a chance to collaborate throughout the region," he said.

Technology, ideas and jobs already flow easily throughout the region, Pierson said, citing for example, Waltham-based Foster-Miller, builder of the Talon military robot, which subcontracts to Granite State Manufacturing in Manchester, which builds many of the robots, and DTC Communications in Nashua, which provides communications systems for the robots.

"What you find here is there is this two-way flow of people and product that cross the borders every single day, and it's really important that it's looked at as a region," he said.

Pierson said the Defense Technology Initiative is the first regional effort focused on defense.

Its immediate goal is to help attract the Air Force Cyberspace Command to New England.

"We're going to try and expose companies who may not normally deal with Department of Defense and provide them a vehicle either to tie on with one of the major contributors, major contractors, and or to get some funding themselves to go ahead and work with Department of Defense and enhance their capabilities in the science and tech arena," said retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald J. Quenneville, executive director for the Defense Technology Initiative.

"In the future we hope to be able to go ahead and come up with funding to have a cyber innovations center so that we can have companies maybe that are very small working with certain technologies to be able to bring them in and marry them up with some of the needs of the Department of Defense," said Quenneville, who graduated from Dartmouth College with an engineering degree.

The estimated economic impact of Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Mass., on the area is more than $350 million per year, he said.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard had a civilian payroll of $343.7 million in 2007 and a $35.9 million military payroll, according to the Seacoast Shipyard Association.