NHPrimary.com: Forbes touts Sanders during Nashua swingCandidate says defense contractor should stay in good shape even if it is sold by Lockheed Martin
By DAVID BROOKS/Telegraph of Nashua
January 27, 2000
Web posted at: 3:01 p.m. EST (2001 GMT)
NASHUA, New Hampshire (The Telegraph of Nashua) -- Sanders' research experience and intellectual heft should keep its business safe even if the company is sold, says Steve Forbes, who on Wednesday became the fifth presidential hopeful to pitch his candidacy to employees of the defense contractor.
"A company would have to be a fool to buy (Sanders) and then change it into something else," Forbes said in an interview following a two-hour session at the company's Canal Street headquarters, which included a tour of the lab where anti-missile defense systems are created for on-board use by military aircraft.
"That's why Lockheed Martin, which is drowning in red ink, is selling it off -- because it has so much value (as a defense contractor)," he said.
But Forbes said it was possible a sale might lead to a greater emphasis on civilian applications of research as a way to fatten the bottom line.
The $1 billion-a-year Sanders was put on the block last year by Lockheed Martin. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C.-based investment group, and defense contractor Northrup Grumman are said to be the leading suitors.
Sanders has had four presidential candidates before Forbes and will host Texas Gov. George W. Bush Thursday, even though having a crowd of reporters and camera operators traipsing through a building filled with classified research projects is not the ideal scenario for the company's security people.
During his talk to roughly 100 employees in a second-floor conference room of the building that once housed Nashua's biggest textile mill, Forbes played to the crowd, saying that the government should avoid "micromanagement," of defense firms as a way to trim procurement costs. He also praised the embattled F-22 fighter to the point that Sanders President Walter Havenstein gave him an F-22 T-shirt.
Sanders hopes to make $3 billion worth of cockpit equipment for the next-generation plane over the next dozen years.
"The blunt truth is that, ultimately, defense is never cheap," he told the employees. "A cheap hawk is a dead hawk. This is especially true when developing new systems. ... When the inevitable disappointments, the inevitable cost overruns happen, you've got to be ready to go on. When you create new things, it's not something that's going to go smoothly, like painting by the numbers."
Outside, he told reporters he felt "tens of billions of dollars more," should be spent on defense in order to bolster America's position as the world's only superpower.
Before his talk, Forbes was given a 15-minute tour of the "jam lab" in the basement of the Canal Street
building, where missile-jamming systems are developed.
Paul Egbert showed him a number of these acronym-laden devices, including AN/ALQ-144A(V), which uses
infrared to fool heat-seeking missiles. Sanders says more than 5,000 of these are deployed on helicopters and
planes worldwide.
Also on display was an IDECM system -- integrated defensive electronic countermeasure -- that deploys a decoy,
towed on fiber-optic cable, behind planes to fool missiles that use radio frequencies to find targets.
Forbes also was shown a room-filling test system that officials said cost some $10 million to develop, which
allows Sanders to maneuver missiles through all three axes of motion as a way of honing detection systems prior
to expensive field tests.
Forbes' talk touched only briefly on abortion, mentioning his support for the "life amendment" in
passing, but he went into detail on other social issues that he has championed, including support for
public-school choice and, in response to a question, for alternatives to Medicare and Medicaid.
Forbes also spent considerable time detailing the flat-tax plan that has been the backbone of his campaign since
1996, emphasizing the lack of capital gains tax that he said would spur investment in research.
David Brooks can be reached at 249-3336 or by e-mail at brooksd@telegraph-nh.com.
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