A January 27, 2008 WashingtonPost.com article reported, “Global markets may be writhing and the U.S. economy teetering at the brink of recession, but for many of the nation’s largest defense firms, the good times keep going.”

“We are about as far removed from the credit risk and those sorts of matters as you can imagine,” said Bruce L. Tanner, chief financial officer at Lockheed Martin of Bethesda. “We feel sort of insulated.”

Although some analysts see that possible troop reductions could hurting the defense industry in the long run; at least one major defense contractor is predicting continued reasonable growth for defense spending in the federal budget for 2009 and beyond.  The largest defense contractors will be relatively unaffected over the long term due to their large multiyear contracts.

What do you think? Are defense industry jobs insulated against the declining economy?