A different kind of economic growth

Posted by Courtney E. Howard

I was not around during the Great Depression, but I do know that it had such a profound effect on my grandfather that he would only pay cash. Loans and credit cards were out of the question; if he didn't have the cash, he would not buy whatever it is he needed.

If we bought him a nice sweater, shirt, watch, or engraved pen, he would thank us but then put it away in a closet until such time as the ones he was using wore out. If he already had perfectly good shirts, why spend money on new ones, he would quip. It could be a little frustrating for family and many found it peculiar, but, in retrospect, I think he had it right.

I was not spoiled growing up, but my parents made sure my brother and I had everything we needed: food, clothing, shelter, and even some of the "warm fuzzy" stuff like their love, time, and attention. I would visit friends' homes and occasionally become jealous of all that they had (a doll house, the latest and greatest new electronic toy, one of the first VCRs or personal computers (a Radio Shack TRS-80), a Colecovision or Atari, etc.); in contrast, I tagged along and helped out as my mother delivered donated food, gifts, and money for heating oil to local families in need. I saw how dire their situations were, and how grateful and they were to gain assistance. Many adults, though thankful, were also contrite, embarrassed, and even apologetic; that was twenty-five years ago.

This year, rather than food or toys, donations were doled out as gift cards. Parents in need called from their cell phones asking for money and gifts for their kids just days before the holiday. Upon delivering cash cards to these folks, I found them living in better conditions than my own; one particular recipient had two cars, lived in a large antique house, had a new cell phone, and 12 (yes, 12) dogs. Others called for cards multiple times -- some had spent the first ones not for the intended purpose, but rather beer and cigarettes, while others simply forgot that they had called earlier, as they went down the list of outlets offering assistance to those in need.

I met lots of people on disability, suffering from such afflictions as a learning disability or attention deficit disorder. Sadly, though, I did not see parents (whether single or in pairs) who are working hard but still failing to make ends meet; those are the ones I particularly like to see gain a helping hand. I believe in helping those who help themselves -- and kids, of course.

We might not be in a depression, per se, but I am seeing a great deal of desperation. More than two dozen burglaries have been reported this week alone in my neighborhood. At the grocery store, patrons are increasingly paying cash and putting things back when they find they don't have enough cash at the register.

Kids in general don't seem to have adjusted, and maybe that's good. Some parents are explaining the economy and budgeting to kids, while others are trying to shield their children from the effects of the recession. I don't have my own kids, but I would tend to be among the former. I would like to think that I would give my kids the facts and let them sort it out for themselves, as I did. As a child, I saw both ends of the economic spectrum all around me, and I think I am the better for it.

Impressive tour, depressing tale

Posted by John McHale

Last week Tom Sharpe, vice president of SMT Corp. -- a privately-held electronics distributor in Newtown, Conn., gave me a damn nice tour of his secure and clean facility -- from the electro-static discharge (ESD) monitoring device and state-of-the-art electronic part testing equipment right down to the snazzy Starbucks coffee machine and hundreds of vintage World War I and World War II posters.

The poster pictured here was painted by Fred Spear in 1915, depicting a woman passenger on the British cruise ship Lusitania drowning with a baby in her arms after the ship was torpedoed by the Germans. Spear reportedly read a detailed newspaper account about bodies recovered after the attack and it inspired him to create the poster. The poster was published by the Boston Committee for Public Safety and is very rare.

Sharpe's facility is quite striking as similar posters line every wall but the slides he showed me of Shantou, China, were striking for much different reasons. Shantou is home to the counterfeit electronic parts industry, which is becoming an expensive and painful headache for defense electronics suppliers.

Sharpe was there on business, but managed to get into Shantou for a tour. The main industry here consists of individual families ripping apart computers and integrated circuit (IC) components then putting them back together and reselling them to brokers. The small families typically perform the work out of their living room.

One might think this business would be lucrative, but the families slapping together the counterfeit boards and ICs are living in squalor.

The entire town is one big electronic component dumping ground -- in the rivers, on the streets, and piled up in backyards. Sharpe says the rate of cancer and other diseases are quite high as chemicals from the eroding parts seep into the soil and water supply.

Quality control is non-existent out there -- sometimes they wash the parts in the rain and let them dry in the sun. What's scary is once these products are finished they look just like any other part to the untrained eye and many slip into batches of good parts that are not counterfeit.

Sharpe says he has spent considerable money for test equipment to spot them, showing me different examples. Many times they will change the date on the part, but sometimes they mess up and send out a part with a date in the future. Sharpe says he saw one that was labeled as designed in late 2009, but it was still 2008.

Many companies do not have SMT's equipment at their disposal and defense suppliers and integrators are quite concerned that one of these parts may find its way into a mission critical system and result in a lethal system failure.

The counterfeits are very available. Just do a Google search for a part number you are liable to pull up something similar to the Chinese IC Mart or sites like it.

Many of Sharpe's vintage posters caution against spreading secrets in case the enemy is listening. In this case the secret behind the parts needs to get out as does the tale of the human waste piling up in Shantou -- a futuristic slum.

Hail to the geek

Posted by Courtney E. Howard

The jury is still out on how President Elect Barack Obama will be as a president. Some would have us believe that he is already failing--several "talk radio" hosts come to mind, in fact--without having even taken the helm. It certainly looks like the "ship" attached the that helm is sinking, but it's not his fault--although regrettably his problem, as well as ours. I thought I'd throw my own bias into the fray, and suggest that Obama might go down as the geekiest President of the United States to date. This moniker is a not a criticism; in fact, I celebrate geeks. Heck, I love geeks--and I am not alone. (Just visit ThinkGeek.com, a t-shirt of which is shown at right, and you'll see what I mean.) Geeks are cool now; huzzah! I wish that it had been cool when I was in school to be, as I was often called, "a book nerd," but I rejoice nonetheless. Our time has come; better late than never.

Now, I am a journalist and as such I cannot simply throw out a statement with no basis in fact, as subjective as my statement might seem. I have evidence that Obama is the biggest geek to take office as the U.S. President.

The Associated Press reported today that Barack Obama is Spider-Man's latest sidekick. Obama stars in a bonus story within Marvel Comics' "Amazing Spider-Man" No. 583, which hits the stands (and the hot little hands of a number of geeks) this coming Wednesday. Collectors will be at once happy and frustrated to hear that Marvel is offering for purchase two editions, each with a different cover; the future Commander-in-Chief and webbed superhero take center stage on a special Inauguration Day cover. Obama had previously revealed that he collects Spider-Man comics. Further, at one of his events, Obama greeted Leonard Nimoy with the Vulcan hand signal/salute. He also has a favorite X-Men character, and he has written poems.

Hail to the geek, I say. I am nothing but optimistic that a fellow geek will deliver a focus on furthering all things geeky: electronics technology, intellect, and maybe even a cool presidential comic. We could use a superhero.

Putting NASA in bed with the Pentagon

Posted by John McHale

A recent Bloomberg news story reported that the incoming Obama administration is looking to have NASA programs linked with the military to get them in orbit more quickly to compete with China and to counter any Chinese military operations in space.

On its face it sounds like a good plan. It would save money by sharing the costs of the various programs. According to the Bloomberg article, the Pentagon spent more on space -- about $22 billion -- last year than NASA did.

Culturally however it may be a tougher sell. NASA has traditionally been a civilian agency focused on the peaceful exploration of space and furthering human knowledge. The public and many inside the agency might be quite uncomfortable about sharing with the Pentagon.

Public opinion might change if China successfully lands humans on the Moon before the U.S. returns. NASA is planning a manned lunar exploration in 2020.

Could we see the planet's major powers carve up the Moon? Today there are no national boundaries on lunar maps. I hope it remains that way.

Obama's pick of Leon Panetta for CIA chief not such a surprise

Posted by John Keller

President-elect Barack Obama has ruffled congressional feathers and raised eyebrows over his choice of former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

I'll concede perhaps the two biggest objections to Panetta to head the nation's foreign spy agency -- Panetta has zero experience in the intelligence community, and congressional leaders who oversee intelligence spending claim they were not consulted before Obama named Panetta.

In the first place, those fretting over Panetta's lack of intelligence experience are right. Panetta, White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997, is an outsider to the CIA who doesn't know where the bodies are buried, and might be hard-pressed to find the people who do. I share the concern for his lack of intelligence experience.

In the second place, the Panetta pick has angered some influential leaders on Capitol Hill. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, and claims Obama didn't consult with her before naming Panetta. She's not out of line to be miffed, and Obama should have handled this matter with a little more grace.

Obama is going to need influential leaders like Feinstein on his side, particularly early in his administration, and creating public ill-will like this does no one any good. Feinstein has got an ego like everybody else on the Hill, and Obama at this stage bruises Washington egos at his peril. Cold shoulders and slammed doors is not what the new president needs in his first days in office.

Feinstein and Panetta are not strangers. They're both California democrats. She's from San Francisco, and He's from Monterey just down the road. They served in Congress briefly in 1993, and both have been influential in the Democrat party. There may be some personal animosity between the two ... I don't know. I'd rather not speculate.

Feinstein is a former mayor of San Francisco and was an unsuccessful candidate for California governor in 1990. I was a college student in San Francisco, incidentally, on the day Feinstein become the city's mayor in fall 1978 when then-mayor George Moscone was assassinated, along with city supervisor Harvey Milk. A member of the San Francisco board of supervisors at the time, she was named to replace the slain Moscone. I remember it was the first Monday after Thanksgiving; what a day that was!

Panetta, meanwhile, was a California congressman from 1976 to 1993, where he chaired the House Budget Committee, and served in several other important congressional posts. From 1993 to 1994 he was director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget before he became Clinton's chief of staff.

Suffice it to say that Panetta has been around the political block. I may not agree with his politics, but I think it's fair to say that anyone who can be White House chief of staff has to be politically savvy, unbelievably organized, a seasoned bureaucratic infighter, and a hard-nosed manager.

From this standpoint, I think Panetta just might be up to the administrative task of becoming Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).

So he's never been a spymaster before. That might not be such a big deal. The guy in the CIA who really oversees the spies is the agency's deputy director for operations (DDO). If Panetta can get that person on his side, then he just might be in good shape. He's a tough enough guy to bring obstinate career bureaucrats in the agency to heel, and he just might be able to put the Obama Administration's stamp on the CIA for years to come.

Obama actions, rhetoric, give defense electronics industry a sigh of relief

Posted by John Keller

Barack Obama's political positions had given the U.S. defense industry reason for worry, but his recent actions and emphasis on soldier-worn technologies have given defense company officials a sigh of relief. Read The Mil & Aero Blog online at www.pennwellblogs.com/mae.

The liberal political positions of President-Elect Barack Obama had given plenty of those involved in the U.S. defense industry reason for worry, but some of Obama's early actions and rhetoric have given defense technology companies a sigh of relief.

Obama also has given defense industry experts reason to believe that soldier-worn technology will be more important during the Obama Administration than ever before.

Of particular interest to military electronics and aerospace electronics companies was Obama's naming of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to continue in that position when Obama takes office later this month. Gates was President George W. Bush's choice to be U.S. secretary of defense to replace former secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Gates has a solid reputation as a friend of the defense industry.

"Obama's selection of Gates is a good sign that he is looking for consistency and stability in the transition," says Tom Arseneault, president of sensor systems at the BAE Systems Electronics & Integrated Solutions Operating Group in Nashua, N.H. "It gave us a bit of a sigh of relief."

Arseneault was nice enough to sit for an interview with me just before the holidays.

U.S. defense industry officials are taking Obama at his word that the new president will do his best to increase U.S. ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines.

With this in mind, defense industry experts anticipate that military technology trends in the near future will involve infantry soldiers and Marines more than ever before, and perhaps will not involve expansive new defense platforms like aircraft, ships, and tanks as much we have gotten used to.

Obama "wants to get as much mileage out of what we have as possible, and he will be emphasizing the soldier, rather than new, big platforms," Arseneault told me during an interview in his office last month.

This trend is likely to emphasize soldier systems like night-vision gun sights and goggles, wearable computers, networked voice and data communications, body armor with embedded electronic devices, soldier-carried unmanned aerial vehicles, and other remote sensors. "Much of the expense of equipping today's soldier is technology," Arseneault points out.

Pledge for positivism

Posted by Courtney E. Howard

I need to see the glass has half full.

It has not escaped my notice that I have been griping a great deal in my blog entries. As cathartic as this practice might be for me, it strikes me that it might not be as healing or constructive for those who read said rants. I also realized that I seem to have a weekly complaint, although I am certain that if pressed I could come up with a daily one.

Nonetheless, at this time of reflection on the year past, I am moved to make a resolution to find things to celebrate in 2009. I want to start small. If I jump feet first into positivity, my friends, family, and colleagues will have me tested for illegal substances, hold an intervention, or begin the proceedings to have me found unfit. To avoid a drastic about-face, I will slowly permit optimism to seep into my well of pessimism. To this end, I intend to make a concerted effort -- nay, strive -- to say something positive in one blog entry each month. If all goes well and I am not starved for positivistic sentiments (as I, naysayer extraordinaire, predict), I will strive for twice monthly blog postivism. By the way, this calls to mind another of my pet peeves: What’s the deal with "bi-monthly"? I would like us to come to a consensus as to whether "bi-monthly" means twice monthly or once every two months, rather than both. On which side do you fall on this controversial subject? You do have an opinion, don’t you? Good, I was beginning to think I was alone.

We at Military & Aerospace Electronics are starting the new year with a bang: a bang-up, newly redesigned issue with a new format, new look, and fresh, new sections and topics. When you get your issue, drop us a line and let us know what you think.

Happy new year, all! Best wishes for a fantastic 2009.