am not sure if you have noticed, but the aviation industry has been slowly consolidating, not expanding, over the last 15-20 years. That does not make for more competition, it makes for less.
Not trying to sound condescending here but its a worthwhile discussion:
Competition is not a label, it's a condition that results from 2 (minimum) rivals actively bidding to win something. As a condition, the environment has to be created that enables the condition to develop. When over-control, protectionism, or lack of trust in the market occurs, the catalyst for competition to occur is absent. The market has no choice but to contract. The responsibility to create the condition where competition can occur is not on the seller (suppliers), but is on the buyer (DoD in this case).
While your observation that the aviation industry may be slowly going through a contraction cycle, there are sectors such as the commercial helicopter industry has boomed in the last 10 years. That growth was due to active and healthy competition.
Why didn't it get noticed? The 3 major US Helicopter OEM's are very dependent on DoD, and not particularly well balanced. They go as DoD goes.
Boeing Vertol has nothing in the civil market, Sikorsky only has S-92 and S-76 (a few little S-300's), and Bell only recently has refocused (thanks to Garrison) on civil after a long distraction with V-22, and H-1s. The top two companies in the world in terms of TOTAL sales are off-shore; AIRBUS (Eurocopter) and AW. Both have a very broad product line and are well balanced between military and civil. They were well positioned to grow with the commercial helicopter market.
Why is the US market so important that you have 5 global OEM's all fighting over it? Even with all the market growth, It still represents a huge percentage of the global helicopter market.
As the largest, single consumer of helicopters in the market, why can't DoD seem to foment a competitive environment in which they would directly benefit? Instead DoD seems to do everything they can to kill the competitive condition because they are execution risk petrified. DoD leadership has been very vocal about leveraging competition in its favor, and then the armed services do the exact opposite.
