Non-Subscriber Extract
All for one - Boeing in India
By Nick Cook
26 March 2008
Fuelled by an economy that is exhibiting near double-digit annual growth, India has embarked on a shopping spree of commercial and military aviation products that has every major global aerospace and defence player beating a path to the subcontinent.
While this is meaningful in its own right - market projections suggest India will need well in excess of USD130 billion worth of commercial and military aircraft over the next 20 years - the true significance of this activity may be regarded in years to come as something far more substantial: a watershed moment when India entered the global aerospace economy and perhaps even ended up breathing new life into it.
One company, Boeing, has placed India at the centre of its ambitions to become a truly global enterprise. The impetus has come from Jim McNerney, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), who has made no secret since taking the helm of his belief that the true potential of Boeing will only properly be leveraged by pulling down the walls between its military and commercial activities; by getting the company to think and act, in effect, as a single, integrated enterprise. "Integration represents a clear competitive advantage - a path to winning in the market [and] growing our business," said McNerney.
How does India fit with this view? Last year, Boeing set up an integrated, enterprise-wide office in New Delhi under the direction of Dr Ian Thomas, president of Boeing India. For the first time in any market where it has a real presence, Boeing has elected to remove the 'silos' between Boeing Commercial Aircraft (BCA), its airliner manufacturing empire, and Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) and enact McNerney's directive.
It has chosen to do this in India owing to a confluence of circumstances and timings - the fact that the booming economy has generated a huge need for airliners and military aircraft; and because strategic relations between India and the United States have warmed to the degree that Washington is now prepared to consider the release of sophisticated defence equipment to the subcontinent.
Although a contract for Indian Navy anti-submarine warfare aircraft is likely to be awarded first - Boeing's P-8I, a derivative of the B-737-based P-8A Poseidon under development for the US Navy, is the sole bid left on the table - it is the Indian Air Force's requirement for 126 Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) that is focusing the attention of the world's major aerospace manufacturers.