The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) is a trade association representing the United States aerospace and defense industry. It states that it has served as the industry's advocacy voice since 1919, that CEO-level officers from more than 300 member companies guide its work through councils and committees, and that its advocacy covers federal investment, deployment of new technologies, global competitiveness, and workforce recruitment and retention. It is headquartered at 1100 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia (Source: aia-aerospace.org).
Activities
AIA organizes its advocacy under national security, civil aviation, international affairs, space, supply chain, workforce, and engineering and technology. It publishes positioning statements, reports and white papers, and administers the National Aerospace Standards catalogue, which it describes as more than 1,400 active standards. In 2010 it partnered with the European association ASD to establish the International Forum on Business Ethical Conduct, which maintains sector-wide principles on anti-corruption, use of advisors, conflicts of interest and protection of proprietary information (Source: aia-aerospace.org).
Position on federal AI acquisition terms
AIA became public on August 24, 2026 with the position that draft changes to the General Services Administration's proposed contract terms for artificial intelligence fail to address industry concerns across a wide range of issues, including commercial carveouts and compliance costs, and that the clause requires a significant rewrite before GSA finalizes it. The association wrote that while it supports GSA's stated goals of protecting government data, encouraging trusted AI and governing government use of AI, "the revised clause continues to create an unworkable framework for most" — a quotation truncated in the retrievable text, which reaches the record through a paywalled lede (Source: insideaipolicy.com).
The instrument at issue is draft GSAR clause 552.239-7001, covered at GSAR 552.239-7001 — Basic Safeguarding of Data Within LLM AI Systems (US, proposed). Commercial carveouts, which AIA names, bear on that clause's scope exception for large language models embedded in a common commercial product or where the functionality is incidental to the primary purpose. The National Defense Industrial Association filed separately in the same period seeking further changes, while software and government-contractor groups had told GSA on August 6, 2026 that the same revision reflected industry input.
Relationships
- related: GSAR 552.239-7001 — Basic Safeguarding of Data Within LLM AI Systems (US, proposed) — sought a significant rewrite of the draft clause in August 2026.
- related: GSA — General Services Administration (AI Deployer) — the agency to which its filing was directed.
- related: National Defense Industrial Association — the other defense-industry association seeking revisions to the same clause.
- instance-of: Procurement-Driven AI Governance — an affected-industry participant in the federal AI acquisition-terms process.
- related: Defense / Military — AI Deployment — represents companies in that sector.