Budgets for countries' homeland security requirements are likely to grow faster than traditional defence budgets in the near future, believes Torkel Patterson, president of Raytheon International.
Homeland security is a particular US designation – other countries tend to class the subject as border security or maritime surveillance – but whatever its name, the international geopolitical situation means that increased resources are being poured into the area.
Asia-Pacific is likely to be a good market in coming years, he believes, as budgets here are rising faster than in regions such as Europe. Several nations are posting annual rises of 4-5%.
With nations paying much increased attention to the subject in recent years, many different systems have been purchased to meet emerging requirements, which provides an opening for a company like Raytheon with its breadth of systems, says Patterson: “Where you have lots of disparate sensors scattered around we can tie them together.
“We are the eyes and ears and muscle around the body of the platforms and we do the integration work to make systems succeed.”
Source: Flight Daily News