U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, had an immediate response of disappointment about the Connecticut layoffs. People from across DeLauro's district work at Sikorsky.
Sikorsky Aircraft will lay off an unspecified number of workers following the U.S. Army’s announcement that it will not build new attack reconnaissance aircraft, a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin confirmed.
“As a result of the U.S. Army’s recent decision to cancel the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program, we are reducing positions within our Sikorsky business segment, which amounts to less than 1% of the Lockheed Martin workforce,” the spokesperson said.
“We intend to retain as many roles as possible to meet national security commitments and preserve the U.S. rotary wing industrial base,” the spokesperson said.
The company did not provide an exact number of workers impacted. Lockheed Martin employs 122,000 people worldwide.
The Stratford-based company, as well as Connecticut’s congressional delegation, had in February expressed disappointment that the Army abandoned the search for a manufacturer to build the new future attack reconnaissance aircraft. The program began in 2018, and Sikorsky was selected as a finalist for its Raider X prototype, competing once again against Bell-Textron, CT Mirror reported.
Sikorsky employs thousands of people in the state between its Stratford headquarters and other campuses. Hundreds of businesses are suppliers to the Lockheed Martin-owned company, the Mirror reported.
“We are extremely disappointed that the Army has decided to walk away from the FARA program. We have been told on multiple occasions by the Army that FARA was their number one priority. This is a complete reversal of that position,” the Connecticut congressional delegation said in a February statement.
“Sikorsky has the world’s greatest workforce when it comes to vertical lift aircraft and decades of proven results when it comes to supplying the U.S. Armed Forces and militaries across the globe with safe dependable military and commercial aircraft. We demand that the Army provides us with a detailed explanation of how they plan to achieve crucial aviation capabilities, thoughtfully prepare our national defense for the future, and utilize the exceptional and seasoned workforce at Sikorsky for generations to come.”
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, had an immediate response of disappointment about the Connecticut layoffs. People from across DeLauro’s district work at Sikorsky.
“I believe that keeping good, high-skilled manufacturing jobs in Connecticut is essential, and it has been a top priority of mine throughout my career,” DeLauro said in an email. “I have spoken with Sikorsky leadership to discuss their plans and the ways we can work together to keep jobs in Connecticut. For the workers who will be impacted, I am ready to offer my assistance.
“Sikorsky and its employees are the lifeblood of our community, and I will continue to do all I can to ensure the company has the resources to remain competitive and continue to create good-paying jobs in Connecticut,” the congresswoman said.
Connecticut’s senior U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal called news of the layoffs, “deeply sad news” that should “be a call to action— to aid the workers and communities most directly impacted, but also to enhance investment in our defense workforce.
“Sikorsky’s engineers are among the best in the world and my office stands ready to do whatever we can to help all the workers who are affected by this deeply disappointing decision,” Blumenthal said in an email. “These men and women are desperately needed throughout the defense industrial base, and I am confident their skills are critical to maintaining our national security.”
The online site Vertical reported that Mike Hirschberg, director of strategy at the Vertical Flight Society said, “The bottom line is that this is very disruptive for the companies involved. They’ve had to put in hundreds of millions of dollars and they’ve hired hundreds of people for this program. Some of these employees moved across the country to take the jobs. Now, each company has to try and find other work for those who were working in the FARA program or lay them off.”
“Fielding a new helicopter requires an engineering team with a large amount of design creativity and a wide range of capabilities to carry out analysis and so on,” Hirschberg said, according to Vertical. “Companies build up design teams over decades and try to keep those capabilities, but if they can’t support them with new programs and they lose the capability, it’s very hard to get it back.
“…. We’re getting to the point of fielding one or two new military designs in a generation. How do companies keep a design team going? If there are no new designs to work on, then there is no need for designers. It takes just a minute to lay off a team of specialized engineers but years to build a team like that again.”
