Non-Subscriber Extract
Opinion: Defence industry can tackle climate change
By Trefor Moss
30 October 2008
Can - indeed, should - the global aerospace and defence (A&D) industry save the planet from catastrophic climate change? According to a number of observers and industry insiders, the time to address this question is now.
In 2005, Jane's Defence Weekly launched 'Technology Audit': profiles of the science and technology bases of the world's lead systems integrators (LSIs).
In seeking out major trends, it rapidly became clear as 'Tech Audit' progressed that most of these LSIs were developing technologies of a similar, if not identical nature; that they were all looking for adjacent markets that would allow them to exploit their skills alongside the core business of defence; and that systems-engineering formed the powerful if invisible 'spine' off which these companies were looking to hang the majority of their products.
In 2007, while carrying out research into emerging energy requirements stemming from the pressures exerted by climate change, I found that two guiding principles emerged. The first was the idea that catastrophic climate change, in its most revolutionary form, represented an extreme threat; the second revolved around an understanding that the earth's complex, intertwined eco-systems were just systems; and the earth, as a whole, one big system of systems. System-of-systems engineering - huge, complex projects like the 1960s NASA Moon programme - is what the A&D industry does best.
Since the Earth is the ultimate system-of-systems, why not deploy the defence industry's system-of-systems engineering skills initially to model and simulate the threat and then, once our understanding of the threat is sufficiently developed, use the defence industry, in concert with others, to design, develop, build and deploy systems that mitigate the damaging impact of CO2 emissions on a global scale?