Raytheon has announced its new Global intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance (ISR) organisation, designed to pull together several current strands of the company’s operations.
“We have several initiatives and ongoing programmes that have all been developing a pedigree of capabilities and experience in the overall airborne ISR market,” says Jim Hvizd, director of programmes for the Global ISR initiative.
These included a series of manned and unmanned platforms and sensor packages ranging from the Beech King Air 350 up to the Bombardier Global Express-based airborne stand-off radar (ASTOR) platform for the UK Royal Air Force.
However, says Hvizd, the success of developing such a wide spread of capabilities in the field has brought its own problems: “Because we have so many capabilities within the company and within the different groups that are working those programmes, we’ve found we’re somewhat duplicating our efforts in servicing multiple markets. With Global ISR we’re integrating these ISR capabilities.”
The aim is “to focus the energy of that group of people into one family”. The new division will be based in El Segundo, California, with significant input from the company’s Dallas, Texas site.
Bob Bushnell, director of business development for the new grouping adds that Global ISR will work with either Raytheon or external products in both the sensor and platform markets, adopting a ‘pick and mix’ approach to giving a customer whatever combination of capabilities best suits their needs.
In some cases, says Hvizd, clients are approaching Raytheon with their existing platforms and asking the company to retrofit them, or to add new ground stations, asking Raytheon to become a service provider for their ISR needs. Platforms falling into this category have included the De Havilland Canada Dash 7, EADS Casa C-295, the Lockheed Martin C-130H, plus a variety of business jets.
“In the Middle East, what we’re hearing the most from prospective customers is an interest in border surveillance, plus littoral and other types of maritime surveillance,” says Bushnell. “They’re mostly interested in synthetic aperture radar and ground moving target indicator sensors, as well as electro-optical and infrared.” With this in mind, the Global ISR division will be offering Raytheon’s capabilities in data fusion to give operators of surveillance aircraft the clearest possible picture of the situation on the ground.
While operators’ requirements are mostly military, the range of tasks with which operators are approaching Raytheon also include civil applications, such as disaster relief, environmental monitoring and fisheries patrol.
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Source: Flight Daily News
