SBAC is Going Strong at 85

The public face of the Society of British Aerospace Companies at the Paris Air Show -- the organization's largest single foray abroad among a near non-stop series of international events and seminars where it helps its member companies sell their skills -- is the UK Pavilion housing 80 different stands, manned 70% by small to medium high-tech enterprises.

The Society in toto represents 180 UK members with a total 400 companies, collectively the world's second-largest aerospace industry with 154,000 personnel, $27 billion annual turnover, and a positive trade balance of $3.15 billion.

Its work, of course, goes far beyond the air show circuit.

SBAC president Ken Maciver considers that as there will be further aerospace consolidation, especially in Europe, and unprecedented demands and risks facing the aeronautical equipment industry, the Society has a vital political role.

"The key feature of the aerospace public-private partnership is that a small number of big decisions have a huge and long-lasting impact on the future of the industry," he says.

"All governments have to invest in them for the very long term and some of the basic research has to stem from them," he says. "We have to interface with the government, with other governments, and with the EU.

"This interfacing is all-important. Any country aspiring to be in the aerospace business must be at the appropriate level of long-term research in all its dimensions-in government, industry, academia.
"And very much part of the thrust in the UK is that each part continues to bear its part of the burden. That might be very obvious, but not everyone has that at the forefront of their minds.
"The basic message is that without research, you will not have the technology, and without that, you would not be in the bidding; for companies are now globally mobile and they will gravitate to areas where there is the soundest research and technological base.

"Just because a factory sits in Birmingham, does not mean it cannot at some point be relocated," Maciver says. "When you have an industry contributing so much to the economy, the protection of its technological base is the most important single factor. In any one country, and this is particularly true of Britain where there is a low level of government involvement, which does not have the huge defense establishment of the U.S.A. for instance, and is a long way from the state control which exists in some countries, it must not be assumed that the politicians, however well intentioned, understand this.

"So it is one of our duties," Maciver says, "to explain what are the requirements of a healthy aeronautical industry in the UK. From my own point of view, I think the government looks on us favorably. They see us a model of a technology-based industry."

Maciver acknowledges the high political elements and national rivalries that need to be balanced with an increasing degree of international collaboration.

"Life is full of challenges and in any case, the role of SBAC president is a brief, butterfly-like existence. Democratically, they don't permit you in the lead role for more than one year," he explains-"though they make sure you remain available for a year after that as deputy."
Maciver is better known of course, as president and CEO of TRW Aeronautical Systems-a U.S.-owned company. TRW is an SBAC member because, in common with such fellow SBAC members as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Thales, among others, it has manufacturing bases in the UK.

SBAC was founded 85 years ago, two years into World War I, as the Society of British Aircraft Constructors. It's goal was to express the concerns and interests of a fast-emerging industry to the government.

The organization began staging showcase air displays in 1932 at Hendon, then an outer London military airfield, before organizing the first post-war international event which alternates with Paris, at its traditional biennial venue at Farnborough, in 1948.

(This reporter's own first close-up view of flying was with a school party to the Hendon Air Show in 1937. Then in 1952 I was to push today's editor-in-chief of Aviation Week's Show News in a baby buggy to his first Farnborough Air Show, the one in which a pin-stripe suited Avro chief test pilot W/Cdr Roly Falk, was instructed to cease slow-rolling his four-engined Vulcan delta bomber low over the runway; thus the SBAC was evidently fulfilling an educative role all those years ago.)