William H. Swanson
Analyst · David Strauss, UBS
Well, what we do here is since Modeling and Sim is a good part of our business, we look at both the upside and the downside and what it means. And the other thing that we look at, I mean, the key things are the versatility of our portfolio. I've always been trained when one door closes, another door opens. Here, the way we talk about it in our company is trying to figure out the second and third order effects of every decision. So for us, what we look at is we still have to figure out how to train, fight and equip, and we have to do it in this new environment. And given that we've got 8,000 programs and 15,000 contracts, we go through a pretty good analysis of figuring out, okay, this is what the normal budget would be, and if we did go to sequestration, what would they do and how would we handle it? Where do we offset it? Clearly, for us, if I think about what the SecDef says, he still wants to have the strongest military in the world. He believes the forces will be smaller but still significant. He wants them agile, flexible, rapid, et cetera. He wants to focus on the balance of global posture, which is really the Pacific region, MENA, and he wants to work on partnerships. So if I think through that part, our international strategy really ties in nice. We also tie into the front part, and he wants to be able to confront multiple aggressors and wants to continue to invest in defense technology. And so, when I think of all the things that he wants to do in the current environment and what sequester would do to them, we'd look at it and make sure that we see the telltale signs of it as things happen, and that as a company, we have plans in place to be able to handle that. And so from our standpoint, we know what to do, if the worst happens. Spending my time on The Hill, we're not hearing about the worst happening. They're trying to figure out ways around this, but we'll see what will happen. But in any case, plus, middle or down, I can assure you the company has plans in place to be able to handle that.