By Michael Sirak
Raytheon [RTN] has launched an initiative called Global Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (GO ISR) to leverage the company’s expertise and provide tailored information-gathering systems and integrated sensor-platform solutions in the near term to customers in the emerging, multibillion-dollar international ISR market, according to a senior company official.
“We have been doing a lot of analysis in the entire airborne ISR marketplace around the world and, fundamentally, we see about a $20 billion opportunity,” Jim Hvizd, director of Enterprise Pursuits within the Strategy and Business Development branch of Raytheon’s Space and Airborne System business area, told Defense Daily during last month’s Dubai Air Show 2007.
The $20 billion estimate covers the next five years, according to the company, which launched GO ISR at the airshow. This market includes potentially the Mideast, India, Japan, Australia, Europe and South America, the company says. It is not limited to military applications, but also covers civil and homeland security sectors.
These ISR opportunities, Hvizd said, match up well with three of the areas in this realm at which Raytheon excels: ground control stations, airborne sensors, and the integration of the sensors into a platform.
“Clients are coming today and saying, ‘I’ve got a problem,'” he said. “They need solutions quickly. I don’t have to take six years to develop stuff. I am ready to go with solutions now.”
With GO-ISR, Raytheon, together with its industry partners, wants to deliver solutions based on the customer’s concepts of operations, by drawing from the company’s existing portfolio of mature sophisticated sensors and control mechanisms and, if need be, the aerial platforms, Hvizd said.
“Really what you are delivering is a unique solution to that particular customer’s requirements,” he said. “We sit down and work with the client to deliver that need.”
The company produces many of the sophisticated sensors used on U.S. military manned and unmanned aircraft, such as electro-optical and infrared cameras and synthetic aperture radar systems with moving target indication capability and maritime modes. It also can provide the datalinks and “multi-INT” sensor packages that collect information in multiple domains, for example signals intelligence.
Further the company says it can offer under GO ISR fully integrated sensor-platform solutions such as the ASTOR long-range, ground surveillance system that it is supplying the U.K. Ministry of Defence or the B350 sensor aircraft, among other platforms.
Raytheon says its capabilities also reach into training and comprehensive contractor logistic support.