On the heels of President Obama’s announcement Thursday that $489 billion will be shaved from the defense budget, New England Cable News covered the potential implications the cuts could have on New England’s economy, citing a December 2010 report by the UMass Donahue Institute’s Economic and Public Policy unit on the defense industry in Massachusetts. The segment introduced the President’s strategy for curtailing land and air forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, while concentrating efforts in counter-terrorism, cyber-security and missile defense.

Although large Fortune 500 contractors, like Raytheon or General Dynamics, are likely to feel the pinch, especially when a pending $600 billion cut goes through, Christopher R. Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, does see opportunity for the state’s high-tech businesses. Anderson, with the Massachusetts High Technology Council’s Defense Technology Initiative, works to promote the state’s high-tech sector to political and military leaders and sees cyber-security, surveillance, intelligence, and enhanced personal technologies used by soldiers in the field as demands which match the capabilities of the state’s innovative individual defense companies. 

According to the Donahue Institute’s report, the defense industry supported more than 115,000 jobs in Massachusetts in 2009, attracting $15.6 billion of all federal contract dollars awarded to Massachusetts. Across the six New England states, according to DTI figures, companies in the region reaped $30 billion in “prime contracts” from 2006 through 2010.

Watch the segment, “Pentagon cuts hit New England” (New England Cable News, 1/5/12)