LI defense firms prepare for budget cuts

There were a lot of long faces inside an auditorium at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s complex in Bethpage at 8 a.m. Monday, and it was not because of the hour or the day. It was the talk of massive cuts in military spending that are expected in the next year and beyond.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-Dix Hills) was on hand to tell about 100 executives from Northrop Grumman and other defense companies and Long Island business leaders the bad news that they already knew. Under a spending reduction process called sequestration -- the result of a failure late last year of a congressional supercommittee to agree on any kind of budget-cutting proposal -- about $500 billion will be cut from the military budget over the next decade.

That comes on top of the $487 billion in cuts the Obama administration has already included in the budget for fiscal 2013, which begins in October. That $487-billion cut is also to come over the next 10 years.

President Barack Obama's 2013 spending plan calls for a Pentagon base budget of $525.4 billion, about $5.1 billion less than approved in 2012. The government is trying to sharply reduce costs in the face of a $14- trillion deficit.

Such budget cuts, Israel told the group, "are not sustainable," and he vowed to fight them while keeping in mind the need to reduce the deficit.

For fiscal 2013 the administration is proposing to build five E-2D Hawkeye advanced-radar patrol planes. The Navy had requested seven. For the following fiscal year, the administration wants another five Hawkeyes, down from eight requested by the Navy. Northrop Grumman is the exclusive builder of the E-2D airplane.

Northrop Grumman has "just under" 1,600 people on the Island, said company spokeswoman Dianne Baumert-Moyik. She would not speculate on any job cuts. "Northrop Grumman fully understands the budget challenges faced by the administration and looks forward to working with industry, the Defense Department and Congress throughout the budget process," the company said in a statement.

Anne D. Shybunko-Moore, president of Hauppauge-based defense contractor GSE Dynamics Inc., said after the meeting that her company's plans are to become more involved with Northrop Grumman and Boeing Co. But both are expected to take hits in the defense budget.

"We'll have to see where that goes," she said. "It's very hard to predict what's going to happen."