The Air Force Association’s Wright Memorial Chapter has lined up a panel of experts to discuss the future of Ohio’s aerospace industry Friday afternoon. The panel will be a part of the AFA’s two-day State Aerospace Conference, Convention and Education Workshop at the Hope Hotel and Conference Center on Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

The panelists include State Senator Steve Austria; Dr. Vince Russo, former executive director of the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC) at Wright-Pat; Dr. Michael Heil, President and CEO of the Cleveland based, Ohio Aerospace Institute; Dayton City Commissioner Matt Joseph; former State Senator Chuck Horn; Thomas Krusemark, ASC’s Small Business Administration Procurement Center representative, and John McCance, AFA state president.

They’ll discuss the 2005 Ohio Aerospace and Defense Advisory Council’s report, “A Strategy for Growing the Ohio Aerospace & Defense Industry.” (pdf file.)

“This is a tremendously important topic to the State of Ohio. The aerospace industry plays a significant role in the overall state economy and per capita is nearly twice the salary of any other industry here” McCance said in a news release. “It is time that we broaden this discussion to include Federal, State, and Local elected officials in addition to industry and Air Force leadership. If we don’t address the findings in the report, we will fall even further behind states that have recognized the importance of the industry and have rallied together to better promote their interests.”

I gave an overview of the conference in a previous blog. You can download details and registration info here.