By Calvin Biesecker
Raytheon [RTN] yesterday said it has agreed to acquire BBN Technologies, a research and development firm that has also brought some products to market such as the Boomerang shooter detection system, in a deal that further strengthens Raytheon’s engineering expertise.
Terms of the pending deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009, were not disclosed. Raytheon said the transaction would not be material this year but would be accretive to sales and earnings in 2010.
“BBN brings world class people, technologies and capability to Raytheon and our customers,” William Swanson, chairman and CEO of Raytheon, said in a statement. “We expect all of our business to benefit from the application of BBN’s research and development expertise and technologies across our product lines and programs.”
Massachusetts-based BBN has 700 employees. The company has a strong relationship with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and also has other customers in the Defense Department and foreign militaries. BBN’s recent contracts include $14 million from DARPA for the fourth year of the five-year Global Autonomous Language Exploitation program, which is aimed at developing and applying software technologies to transcribe, translate, and distill large volumes of speech and text in multiple languages. The company also recently received a $30 million award from DARPA under the Machine Reading Program aimed at developing an automated reading system that bridges the gap between naturally occurring text and the artificial intelligence reasoning systems that need such knowledge.
BBN will become part of Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems (NCS) segment, in particular the Integrated Communications Systems business. BBN’s has a strong background in advanced communications and infrastructure capabilities, including the ARPANET, which is a forerunner to the Internet, Raytheon said. The company also has capabilities in cyber security, health care information and sensors.
“This acquisition will strengthen our positions in networking, communications, video surveillance and advanced sensing applications,” Colin Schottlaender, president of NCS, said in a statement.
On the product side, BBN’s Boomerang shooter detection system is deployed in ongoing war zones. The company also has developed a caller experience analytics platform for call centers and a television broadcast monitoring system.