Defense Alliance Holds Industry Roundtable At 3M

St. Paul  6/10/08 – The Defense Alliance of Minnesota held its “Defense Industry Roundtable” on Monday.  The event is an annual forum that gathers business, government and academic stakeholders from the region to discuss trends, challenges and opportunities in the defense and homeland security industries.  The morning event was held at 3M’s Innovation Center in St. Paul, and included 130 Defense Alliance and Defense Sustainment Consortium (DSC) members.  It was followed by the day-and-a-half meeting of the DSC, a national membership organization that pursues opportunities in sustainment technologies for the Department of Defense (DoD) and other federal agencies.

The centerpiece of the Roundtable was the panel and membership discussion that featured:  Rick Udicious, General Manager of Lockheed Martin Tactical Systems; Dennis Morris, President, BAE Systems, Armament Systems; Tom Nelson, General Manager of Shield Technologies; Tim Mulcahy, Vice President of Research, University of Minnesota; and John Hilbert of Kinghorn, Hilbert and Associates, LLC.  The panel was followed by a brief speech from Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who gave her perspective on the defense industry, and support for the nation’s Veterans and injured warriors.  Attendees were also provided with tours of 3M’s unique Innovation Center.  The multi-media tour showcases the ways in which the St. Paul based company innovates to bring unique solutions to the defense market and many other industries.  An evening dinner cruise on the Mississippi provided a unique chance for attendees to network between the event’s two days.

The DSC portion of the meeting, a quarterly event held at various locations around the country, featured briefs from government agency stakeholders such as NAVAIR (responsible for naval aviation program procurement and sustainment), and partner companies such as 3M, Lockheed Martin, Minnesota Wire and Shield Technologies.  The defense sustainment effort is one which is now being championed on behalf of the DSC in this region by the Defense Alliance, which coordinates the Midwest Center for Defense Sustainment (www.defensesustainment.com).  Sustainment issues represent a major segment of the $500 billion-plus DoD budget. 

Minnesota Wire is a vertically integrated, custom manufacturing and development house for wire, cable and interconnect assemblies to the Medical, Defense, Instrumentation and Telecommunications industries.  The company is a market and R&D leader in:  electrical signal integrity; mitigating triboelectric effects; radio-translucent wire; and innovative connections for wearable electronics, patient monitoring systems and leading-edge medical devices.  Minnesota Wire has a defense sales division (Minnesota Defense), a surgical products subsidiary (Minnesota Bramstedt Surgical) and a joint venture with Primordial, an in-house software development firm.