U.S. Reliance on Foreign Sources in Missile Special Test Equipment Manufacturing

Abstract

Many question the health and competitiveness of U.S. industry. In today's global markets we have seen U.S. dominance erode in several large industries. These industries include consumer electronics, automobiles and machine tools. When analyzing the nation's industrial base, one area of concern beyond final goods is the utilization of foreign sourced materials in domestic products. It was suggested that as much as 30 percent of the components in U.S. test equipment might be foreign sourced. The purpose of this study was to test that hypothesis, narrowing the scope to the manufacturing of production special test equipment (STE). As used here, production STE is that test equipment designed for and typically unique to a given production effort. A case study was done with the production STE of the HARM missile. This case study, coupled with the expert opinion of industry representatives, suggests only marginal dependence on foreign sourced materials in production STE.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA245974

Entities

People

  • William J. Devlin

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Biomedical
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Business Administration
  • Contractors
  • Contracts
  • Defense Industry
  • Electronics
  • Electronics Industry
  • Governments
  • Industrial Equipment
  • Management Personnel
  • Manufacturing
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Personnel Management
  • Second World War
  • Test Equipment
  • United States

Readers

  • Economics
  • Software Engineering

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics