New Haven Register - Rep. Rosa DeLauro Calls for End to Defense Contracts to Russian Company

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By Luther Turmelle

U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, and some colleagues in Congress want the U.S. Defense Department to stop awarding more $1 billion in no-bid contracts to Russia's state-owned defense contractor.

DeLauro used a visit to Spectrum Associates, a Plains Road company that makes components and does assembly work for helicopters produced by Sikorsky Aircraft of Stratford, to announce her latest attempt to end Defense Department dealings with Rosoboronexport.

The no-bid contract the agency awards is for dozens of Russian-built helicopters used by Afghan National Security Forces.

DeLauro's opposition to doing business with Rosoboronexport dates back to 2009. Last year, after Congress voted unanimously to prohibit the Defense Department from using 2013 federal funds to do business with the Russian company, the agency used unobligated funds from 2012, according to DeLauro.

"They pulled a fast one on us," she said.

So now DeLauro, along with U.S. Reps. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Adam Kinzinger. R-Ill., have introduced legislation that prohibits the use of federal funding for any dealings with Rosoboronexport and expands sanctions to include anyone who does defense contract business with the company.

The bill is one of two pieces of legislation Congress will consider in the coming months.

One is part of defense appropriations bill that DeLauro said Congress isn't likely to take up until after November's midterm elections. The bill she announced Monday is free-standing from the appropriations bill, but probably won't be taken up until the new Congress takes office in January 2015.

DeLauro said her objections to what the Department of Defense doing business with the Russian company are both moral and economic in nature.

"We shouldn't be filling the coffers of a Russian manufacturer that has helped fuel a violent and repressive regime in Syria and played a role in what's going on in the Ukraine," DeLauro said. "Connecticut companies should be able to compete on a level playing field for these contracts that are now being awarded no-bid. We were once known as the "Arsenal of the Republic' and this is how it should continue to be."

About half of the aerospace work that Spectrum Associates does is for Sikorsky. Company President Richard Meisenheimer said that if Sikorsky were allowed to bid on the contracts the Defense Department now automatically awards Rosoboronexport and won, Spectrum Associates would have $25,000 work on each S-61 helicopter that would go to the Afghans.

"The Russian aircraft are less sophisticated," Meisenheimer said.

But Defense Department officials continue to defend the purchases, telling the political website The Hill on July 22 that the Russian Mi-17 that is now being provided to the Afghanis is better suited to that country's terrain and is easier to keep running.

Spectrum Associates employs more than 75 people at two locations in the city: the 32,000-square-foot building on Plains Road and an 18,000-square-foot facility on New Haven Avenue, where employees work on the hydraulic subsystem components of helicopters.

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