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.
Last week saw a slew of defense-related developments on Capitol Hill. While none of them alone was definitive for military programs, they continue to weave a narrative of tougher decisions to come over the defense budget starting next year and beyond. That is because Senate appropriators put their imprimatur on fiscal 2015 defense spending plans that—like other key legislative branch defense committees—overwhelmingly rebuffs the Pentagon’s first hard proposals to meet congressionally mandated sequestration-level spending caps.
U.S. defense officials and executives must figure out how to shepherd more industrial consolidation, bring more commercial technology into the defense sector, and embrace the notion that the business model of providing national security is becoming more global in character, according to a former No. 2 Pentagon official. William Lynn III, CEO of Finmeccanica North America and DRS Technologies, and President Barack Obama’s first deputy defense secretary, says that in the future the West’s defense industry could come to look a lot like the auto industry.
