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Wire & Cable ASIA – May/June 2017
From the Americas
‘The Wall’
In a step toward delivering on a campaign
promise, the Trump administration seeks
input on walling off the USA from Mexico
US Customs and Border Protection, the largest law
enforcement agency of the Department of Homeland
Security, on 24th February issued a preliminary request for
proposals in advance of a formal solicitation “for the design
and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity
of the United States border with Mexico.” Vendors were
asked to submit prototype concepts, with cost estimates
to follow promptly. Although no funding for the project has
been arranged, the agency said that “multiple awards” were
contemplated by mid-April.
Mr Trump in January signed an executive order to begin
preliminary steps toward building a wall which could stretch
almost 2,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific
Ocean. As reported by Bloomberg News, Konstantin
Kakaes, an international security fellow with the New
America Foundation, estimated the cost of a 1,000-mile
concrete wall 50 feet high, with 10 feet below ground, at
$38 billion. According to Bloomberg reporters Cary O’Reilly
and Robert Levinson, construction companies that may
respond to the preliminary request for proposals include
Bechtel Group Inc, which builds airports and nuclear power
plants and has done almost $3 billion in USA government
work since the beginning of fiscal 2013; BL Harbert
International Inc, a construction company ($2 billion); and
Caddell Construction Co ($1.9 billion).
Presuming the barrier is in fact erected, an irony of the
massive undertaking to wall the USA off from Mexico
is that one of the major beneficiaries could be Mexico’s
Cemex SAB, the largest cement maker in the Americas.
Messrs O’Reilly and Levinson pointed out that Cemex is
one of the best-positioned companies to profit because
it has operations on both sides of the border. (“Trump
Administration Makes Its First Move to Build Border Wall,”
24th February)
Aircraft
An analyst sees military orders as helping
the world’s two big plane makers to
weather the downturn in their industry
“The great boom is over,” aerospace consultant Richard
Aboulafia said at an industry conference in the Seattle
area in February, in reference to the decline in demand for
commercial jetliners made by Boeing Co, of the USA, and
Europe’s Airbus. But the Teal Group analyst said he expects
rising sales of military aircraft to head off any “bust cycle.”
Mr Aboulafia, who writes and edits Teal Group’s World
Military and Civil Aircraft Briefing, a forecasting advisory
covering some 135 aircraft programmes and markets, told
Reuters that multi-year backlogs of jetliner orders at both
big plane makers will cushion the downturn. Rising sales of
spy and fighter planes will also help.
Defence spending is expected to rise in the USA under
President Donald Trump, at least initially. (“Global
Aerospace Boom Is Over, But Likely No Bust Ahead
– Analyst,” 15th February). As noted by Reuters, in the
commercial aircraft market a ramp-up in output of
single-aisle Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 aircraft will likely
go according to plan. The two plane makers aim to increase
output by more than 30 per cent through to the end of
the decade and need the income from these high-volume
assembly lines to hit their financial targets. “This is the
part of the market where you’re going to see continued
growth,” said Mr Aboulafia. But he believes twin-aisle
aircraft face a much tougher future because there are more
models competing even as demand is declining. “Everyone
wants too much from this market,” he said: orders are
“plateauing.”
Reuters reporter Alwyn Scott noted these caveats from
Mr Aboulafia:
 Higher interest rates and a possible border tax (the value
added tax on imported goods favoured by President
Donald Trump) could hurt the USA aerospace industry
by causing a further strengthening of the dollar;
 Also, the risk of a major trade dispute is as high as at
any time since World War II. A USA-China trade dispute
would, the aerospace analyst believes, likely benefit
Airbus since China could easily retaliate against the USA
by curbing orders of Boeing planes.
 Reuters also observed that any aerospace industry
slowdown always has implications for suppliers, who
must anticipate the flow of orders as a guide to the
capacity they will need to meet changes in aircraft
production.
From the US military, a portable capture
system for drones anticipates launch and
retrieval from ships, trucks and ground
facilities
As drones figure ever more prominently in the news,
thought needs to be given to capture of the unmanned craft
in case of misadventure. Michael Cooney, the online news
editor at Network World, has reported on a research project
for catching full-sized military drones mid-flight without
destroying them. The brainchild of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the system known as
SideArm has features in common with the launch-and-trap
system for planes berthed on aircraft carriers.
DARPA said that SideArm developer Aurora Flight Sciences
(Manassas, Virginia) has successfully tested a full-scale
system that repeatedly captured a 400-pound Lockheed
Martin Fury unmanned aircraft launched from a catapult
and accelerated to flight speed. A Fury can achieve over
130mph. SideArm is reportedly capable of recovering
aircraft up to 1,100 pounds. (“How to Catch a 400 Pound
Drone Traveling at Full Speed,” 6th February). According
to DARPA, the small size of the system derives from the
concentration of its equipment into a single rail that folds for
easy transport. In a departure from the traditional method
of catching the drone in a net, SideArm snags a hook on
the back of the drone and directs the hook to travel down
BigStockPhoto.com Photographer: Aispl