Securing the Next 50 Years of Southern Pacific Aerospace & Defense — SPADA
How workforce development, specialized suppliers, policy engagement, and regional collaboration can help the Southern Pacific aerospace and defense ecosystem thrive for decades to come.
For generations, the Southern Pacific region has been one of America’s defining centers of aerospace innovation, defense manufacturing, space technology, advanced materials, and engineering excellence. From Greater Los Angeles through the broader Southern California aerospace corridor, the region has produced the ideas, systems, materials, components, and workforce that have helped make the United States a global aerospace leader.
That legacy is more than regional history. It is part of America’s strategic advantage.
But leadership cannot be taken for granted. As the United States works to on-shore and strengthen critical industrial capabilities, reduce supply-chain vulnerability, and develop the next generation of technical talent, the Southern
Pacific region must remain connected, visible, and prepared to act. The region’s ability to design, build, sustain, and rapidly field aerospace and defense capability depends on more than major prime contractors, federal programs, or a single breakthrough technology. It depends on a durable domestic industrial ecosystem: skilled people, specialized manufacturers, trusted suppliers, innovators, educational partners, and policymakers working toward shared goals.
The strategic imperative
For aerospace and defense, industrial resilience means more than moving final assembly back to the United States. It means retaining the complete chain of domestic capability necessary to support programs, respond to changing requirements, and sustain national readiness over time.
That includes specialized machining, fabrication, finishing, coatings, tooling, testing, repair, and qualification capabilities; experienced technicians, engineers, inspectors, operators, quality professionals, and skilled tradespeople; secure domestic sources for materials and components; and a pipeline of students and emerging professionals who see aerospace and defense as accessible, rewarding careers.
It also includes the small and mid-sized enterprises—SMEs—that solve highly specific, mission-critical manufacturing problems. These companies often operate quietly behind the scenes, but their capabilities may be indispensable to a platform, supply chain, or program. When one disappears, the impact may not be obvious until a program encounters a delay, qualification bottleneck, single-source dependency, or a capability that must be rebuilt at significant cost.
The Southern Pacific region has many of these critical ingredients. It is home to world-class primes, research institutions, universities, community colleges, emerging technology companies, specialized suppliers, and an exceptional concentration of engineering and technical talent.
It is also supported by committed companies, educators, workforce organizations, public leaders, and community partners already doing meaningful work. The opportunity is to build on that foundation by strengthening the connections among them and making the region’s capabilities more visible, accessible, and aligned. Many highly capable regional SMEs could benefit from broader visibility beyond their immediate customer base, while deeper, ongoing exchange among industry, education, workforce partners, and policymakers can help ensure that training, investment, and support remain responsive to real-world aerospace and defense needs.
The challenges facing the Southern Pacific aerospace and defense ecosystem cannot be solved by any one company, school, agency, or organization. SPADA helps bring the right voices together—industry, education, workforce partners, community leaders, and policymakers—to identify opportunities and move regional solutions forward. Learn more or get involved at SPADA Alliance.
SPADA’s role
The Southern Pacific Aero-Defense Alliance—SPADA—exists to help create the conditions in which the region’s aerospace and defense ecosystem can thrive.
SPADA is not the industry itself. It is a bridge for the industry: a mission-driven platform that helps companies, educators, government leaders, workforce partners, and community stakeholders connect, communicate, and collaborate around shared priorities.
Its mission is to advance the Southern Pacific aerospace and defense ecosystem by uniting industry, government, academia, and community to drive innovation, develop a resilient workforce, and build shared regional prosperity.
SPADA helps elevate the issues that matter, strengthen regional relationships, and turn awareness into practical action. That means helping specialized companies gain visibility; connecting educators and employers around workforce needs; helping students recognize meaningful career pathways; and convening public leaders alongside the people who understand the operational realities of aerospace and defense manufacturing.
SPADA’s four pillars
SPADA’s work is organized around four interconnected pillars designed to strengthen the relationships, awareness, and collective action needed for long-term aerospace and defense vitality.
Workforce development:
What SPADA advances: Technical training, STEM outreach, career exposure, mentorship, and stronger pathways from education to industry
Why it matters: The region’s future depends on a durable pipeline of engineers, technicians, skilled tradespeople, and industry professionals
Industry and SME visibility:
What SPADA advances: Greater awareness of regional manufacturers, suppliers, innovators, and specialized service providers.
Why it matters: Critical domestic capabilities cannot be supported or expanded if they remain invisible and disconnected
Policy and government engagement:
What SPADA advances: Constructive conversations among policymakers, government stakeholders, industry, education, and workforce partners
Why it matters: Better decisions begin with direct insight from the people and companies responsible for execution
Collaboration and regional connectivity:
What SPADA advances: Forums, events, partnerships, mentorship, and practical resource-sharing.
Why it matters: The region is stronger when industry, education, government, and community work together rather than in silos.
These pillars reinforce one another. A student exposed to aerospace and defense career paths may become the next generation of technical talent. A workforce partner connected with manufacturers can better align training with actual employer demand. An SME introduced to a prime contractor, public-sector leader, or peer organization may gain an opportunity to grow, collaborate, or make a critical capability known. A policymaker who hears directly from regional industry can better understand what is needed to preserve and expand domestic capability.
The Southern Pacific challenge
The Southern Pacific aerospace and defense economy is unique. It combines major primes and research institutions with a dense network of smaller companies possessing highly specialized—and often irreplaceable—capabilities.
These businesses may manufacture a critical component, develop an advanced material, provide a precision process, support qualification and compliance, build a subassembly, or maintain a legacy capability that would be difficult and costly to recreate elsewhere. They are the companies that make the industrial base real.
They also face pressures that are especially acute in the region: high operating costs, intense competition for skilled talent, aging workforces, limited career awareness among students and families, gaps between training and evolving industry needs, and complex procurement, regulatory, security, and compliance requirements.
No individual organization can solve these challenges alone. But a connected region can identify risks earlier, build stronger partnerships, share insight, develop talent, elevate supplier capabilities, and create a more informed collective voice.
That is where SPADA can help bridge the gap between awareness and action.
From awareness to action
The next generation of aerospace and defense capability will not be created by one sector alone. It will require collaboration across advanced manufacturing, space systems, autonomy, artificial intelligence, materials science, propulsion, cyber, test and evaluation, sustainment, and dual-use technology.
It will also require a workforce that includes engineers and scientists, but also machinists, technicians, welders, inspectors, quality professionals, program managers, logistics specialists, supply-chain professionals, and skilled tradespeople.
SPADA helps bring these perspectives into the same conversation through curated, collaborative events that focus on the issues shaping the Southern Pacific aerospace and defense ecosystem. These forums are designed to move beyond general networking by bringing together the people closest to the challenge: manufacturers, SMEs, primes, educators, students, workforce organizations, policymakers, community leaders, and strategic partners.
The Alliance also creates committees and working groups that allow regional stakeholders to examine specific issues, share insight, identify practical opportunities, and help advance solutions. Those efforts may address workforce pathways, supplier visibility, industrial capability, policy engagement, emerging technology, or other challenges affecting the region’s long-term competitiveness.
By approaching these issues through both a regional and national lens, SPADA helps ensure that the Southern Pacific aerospace and defense community can contribute to broader U.S. priorities while also addressing the needs, strengths, and realities unique to this region.
The purpose is not simply to hold meetings. It is to create meaningful connections, informed discussion, and coordinated action that help the Southern Pacific aerospace and defense ecosystem remain innovative, competitive, and prepared for what comes next.
Become involved
The next 50 years of Southern Pacific aerospace and defense will be shaped by the organizations and individuals who choose to participate today.
Become a member: SPADA membership offers companies and professionals a way to build strategic relationships, connect with regional decision-makers, participate in workforce, policy, innovation, and supply-chain conversations, and help give specialized regional capabilities greater visibility.
Become a collaborator: Aerospace and defense companies, prime contractors, suppliers, SMEs, technology firms, educational institutions, workforce organizations, public agencies, nonprofits, and economic-development partners can contribute through events, mentorship, facility tours, student engagement, workforce insight, policy discussions, committee participation, and relationship-building.
Sponsor the mission: Sponsorship helps support workforce and STEM initiatives, student engagement, mentorship, curated industry and policy forums, regional supplier visibility, and collaborative efforts that strengthen domestic industrial resilience. It is more than brand visibility; it is a practical investment in the regional ecosystem that supports America’s future industrial capability.
The future is collaborative
The Southern Pacific region has always been a place where aerospace ambition becomes operational capability. Its companies have built, supported, and sustained technologies that matter to national security, mobility, exploration, and economic growth.
Its next chapter must be just as intentional.
SPADA is helping create the conditions for that future by advancing workforce development, elevating specialized regional SMEs, convening industry and policymakers, developing forums for issue-based collaboration, and supporting committees focused on practical regional and national priorities.
The Alliance is not the industry itself. It is the bridge that helps the industry see, support, and strengthen itself.
Join SPADA. Collaborate with the Alliance. Sponsor the mission.
Together, we can help ensure that the Southern Pacific aerospace and defense ecosystem remains strong, vibrant, competitive, and positioned to thrive for the next 50 years.
Did You Know? Southern Pacific A&D
California leads the nation in aerospace employment, with more than 110,000 aerospace jobs, and its aerospace and defense sector is estimated to contribute about $37 billion in annual GDP output. California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Developmentbusiness.ca
Los Angeles County added approximately 11,000 aerospace and defense jobs between 2022 and 2024. The sector accounted for more than 58,700 jobs in the county, with an average wage of about $141,110—more than twice the county average. Los Angeles Times
Southern California’s aerospace history is deeply tied to America’s industrial strength. At its 1987 peak, California accounted for nearly 25 percent of U.S. aerospace employment, and Los Angeles County alone employed roughly one in ten aerospace workers nationally. Rose Institute
Defense spending remains deeply embedded in the region. In fiscal year 2023, Southern California counties received major defense-contract awards, including $12.0 billion in Los Angeles County, $10.9 billion in San Diego County, $2.0 billion in Orange County, $1.5 billion in Ventura County, and $754.2 million in Santa Barbara County. Rose Institute
Pennie Burnham, SPADA CEO
