Based in Washington, Michael Bruno is Aviation Week Network’s Executive Editor for Business. He oversees coverage of aviation, aerospace and defense business issues, and is editor in chief of Aviation Week Executive Intelligence newsletters. Beyond reporting, Bruno helps organize related Aviation Week conferences, hosts podcasts and webinars, and speaks publicly as a subject matter expert on industry issues. Since joining Aviation Week in 2005, he has won several Jesse H. Neal and Aerospace Media awards. He has a master's degree from Syracuse University and a bachelor's from Vanderbilt University.
Paul McLeary (Washington), Kimberly Johnson (Washington), Mike Fabey (Washington)
In November, President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released a stunning report detailing areas where commission members say they found $200 billion of proposed cuts in the federal government—and although the report was released on the Marine Corps’ 235th birthday (Nov. 10), the USMC took a beating.
DALLAS—An accurate way to sum up the overall mood at AVIATION WEEK’s MRO Americas Conference & Exhibition would be “cautiously optimistic.” There seems to be a sense of hunkering down and really scrutinizing business to make it as efficient as possible, as well as creating services to provide customers more value and more choices. As SR Technics’ CEO Bernd Kessler said, “There’s nothing like a crisis to drive change.”
Pro-Boeing lawmakers pressed top Defense Department and Air Force officials March 11 over the service’s recent aerial refueling tanker award to a Northrop Grumman/EADS North America team, especially over high-level policy implications like Buy American concerns. But Pentagon-based officials asserted that they followed acquisition law as it stands now, and they offered no indication that they were backing off the relatively surprise choice of Northrop/EADS over Boeing. Decision challenged
