Defense Industry

When a tiny community college in Daytona Beach, Fla., held a golf tournament last May 16, a remarkable number of top executives of giant defense contracting firms came from as far away as New York and contributed up to $5,000 each. The presence of these out-of-town big shots transformed the once locally oriented annual outing, which had never before raised more than $5,000, into a surprisingly lucrative fund-raiser that yielded a $110,000 bonanza for the struggling, two-year college.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald J. Atwood will visit the Soviet Union next week to discuss converting the Soviet defense industry to civilian production, the Pentagon said Thursday. Seven U.S. industrialists will accompany Atwood on the eight-day fact-finding trip, said spokesman Pete Williams.

Nineteen former defense-industry purchasing agents and suppliers involved in subcontracts on a dozen of the nation's most sensitive military projects were indicted on bribery and kickback charges Thursday in Los Angeles as part of a federal crackdown on "widespread and longstanding" defense industry corruption. Describing bribery and kickbacks as "a cancer on the defense industry," U.S. Atty. Robert C.

Angry over being excluded from a meeting between congressmen and defense industry representatives, a coalition of eight minority groups Thursday proposed their own plan to ensure that minorities get more economic benefit from the nation's $150-billion-a-year defense expenditures. Coalition members, who publicly confronted Rep. Augustus F.

A former vice president of Teledyne Camera Systems and three former employees of Hughes Aircraft Co. pleaded guilty Monday in Los Angeles federal court to taking kickbacks for awarding subcontracts on U.S. Defense Department projects. Assistant U.S. Atty. Fred Heather said no deals had been made with the four men on sentencing, "other than an agreement to inform judges of the extent of their cooperation" in an FBI investigation into kickbacks in Southern California's huge defense industry.

It seems that every week yet another acquisition is announced in the defense industry. Favorite targets are exciting defense electronics companies whose capabilities are the building blocks for future warfare and whose values are bid up in each successive deal to unprecedented levels.

Defense Secretary William Perry has said that the Pentagon wants an orderly consolidation of the defense industry in the post-Cold War era. But what Wall Street has in mind may be something much different: a fast-paced auction of weaker contractors, in which investment bankers and major investors will be calling many of the shots. That became apparent last week when a $1.9-billion bid by Martin Marietta Corp. for Grumman Corp. prompted a rival $2-billion offer by Northrop Corp.

Amid cries of protest that the state was unfairly singled out by the latest recommended list of military base closings, California political leaders tend to gloss over some basic history: Over the past decade, no state has come close to the number of military and civilian jobs in California. In 1991, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 67 major bases in California employed 309,991 people.

Bernard L. Schwartz, chairman of New York-based Loral Corp., said the defense industry could benefit in the near term from the heightened military tensions resulting from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Loral supplies a wide range of electronic warfare gear that is now being deployed in air and ground systems in Saudi Arabia, including tactical reconnaissance systems aboard aircraft and sensors in a variety of missiles, Schwartz said. And Ford Aerospace Corp.

The Supreme Court gave the defense industry a broad shield from liability Monday, ruling that government contractors may not be sued for dangerous or defective products made especially for the government. On a 5-4 vote, the high court concluded that military contractors, like the military, should be immune from paying damages to a serviceman or civilian injured by a defective product.