PARIS—Despite escalating pressure to cut Pentagon spending, the top strategist for Boeing Co.'s defense operations sees potentially robust growth opportunities in both cyber protection and new unmanned aircraft programs.
Chris Raymond, head of strategy and business development for Boeing's Defense Space & Security unit, on Sunday highlighted those areas as possible bright spots among the otherwise relatively dim prospects for Pentagon acquisition budgets.
In a news briefing on the eve of the official kickoff of the Paris Air Show, Mr. Raymond reiterated that Boeing also hopes to partly offset impending cuts in U.S. defense spending by selling more helicopters, jet fighters and C-17 cargo aircraft around the world, including parts of Asia, the middle East and Latin America.
But amid continuing uncertainty about Pentagon spending plans over the next few years, the Boeing official stressed that the realms of cyber protection and so-called unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, offer potentially the best chances for the Chicago aerospace company to snare substantial new U.S. orders.
"There's a lot of discussion about other [drone] platforms" in addition to the small number of models already operated by the Pentagon, Mr. Raymond said, including some that would be able to hover and fly like helicopters. Those areas "will stay hot from a research and development perspective," he added, "because there are future opportunities out there everybody sees."
In discussing cyber protection, the Boeing executive stressed that "we do see it as a growth area."
For starters, Boeing expects that Defense Department contractors relatively quickly will face the likelihood of "greater requirements and expectations" related to the cyber security of aircraft and even subsystems they sell to the Pentagon.
In the near term, Mr. Raymond described Boeing's strategy as "building our capabilities" to concentrate on helping U.S. intelligence customers with "information sharing and information assurance." But eventually, Mr. Raymond predicted, Boeing will consider how far it can expand its cyber expertise "in terms of other customers, both federal, and maybe someday, commercial entities."
In an era of shrinking defense dollars, fixed-price production contracts and few new program starts, talk about potential cyber protection contracts conjures up visions of greater contractor flexibility and heftier profit margins.
Even more importantly, the drive to protect sensitive data from threats posed by cyber-intruders is coming from various parts of the U.S. government. From the White House to the Pentagon to the Department of Homeland Security, according to Mr. Raymond, data protection has "become viewed as an enduring security issues."
Since cyber security is intended to counteract a threat "we're going to worry about for evermore," Mr. Raymond said, "selling those services and capabilities" both inside and outside the U.S. government is "going to feel like a growth business for everybody."
Prior to the show, Dennis Mullenberg, the chief executive of Boeing's defense operations, projected that overseas business would account for about one-quarter of the unit's overall revenue by 2013, nearly three times the percentage in 2006. In spite of personnel reductions in the U.S. in anticipation of shrinking Pentagon budgets, the Associated Press quoted the Boeing executive telling reporters at an air show in Singapore that "we anticipate steady, moderate growth in our defense business" globally.