Carole Rickard Hedden retired in 2022 as Executive Editor for custom content and Program Excellence for the Aviation Week Network, providing custom content and research to industry executives. She also was Managing Editor of Aviation Week’s Advanced Air Mobility Report. She joined Aviation Week in 1996 as a financial/business editor and has led special projects for more than two decades.
Prior to joining Aviation Week, Hedden worked for over 20 years in the news media and as a corporate communications leader at Fortune 100 companies.
Ask Kimberly P. Gavaletz, vice president of F-35 autonomic logistics global sustainment at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, about MRO and the first comment will be a gentle correction. It's not MRO for the F-35; it's sustainment. If Gavaletz could wave a wand and change the world of defense MRO, "we would use the magic wand to eliminate MRO."
During the past 10 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has conducted an annual overview of the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) job market--the skills most in demand, compensation compared with other technological industries and what attracts talented men and women. Over that decade, the workforce has shrunk and then rebounded to more than 600,000 employees, according to the Aerospace Industries Assn. (AIA). Now, the mystifying question is whether the industry faces a looming talent crisis.
erospace/defense contractors committed to paying more than lip service to attracting the best and brightest talent need to concentrate on two imperatives: technologically challenging jobs and a robust product-development pipeline. That's the message that comes through loud and clear in Aviation Week's second annual workplace survey, which represents nearly two-thirds of the U.S. aerospace/defense employment base.
