F-22Raptor
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When investors think about innovation, the place that usually comes to mind is Silicon Valley. However, the next time Washington finds itself in a big war against a peer or near-peer adversary, the town that is likely to provide the tools for victory is 3,000 miles away. That town is Nashua, New Hampshire, home to what may be America’s most secretive tech company — the Electronic Systems unit of BAE Systems .
Electronic Systems is the biggest employer in New Hampshire, but you can be forgiven for not knowing that, because the business tries real hard to stay below the radar screen. And with good reason: it is the world leader in technologies used to dominate and exploit the electromagnetic spectrum, technologies many experts think could decide the outcome of future wars. BAE technologies don’t just help U.S. warfighters communicate, navigate and sense in the fog of war; they prevent enemies from doing the same, so that their military forces are deaf, dumb and blind in combat.
It’s called electronic warfare, and the people at Electronic Systems headquarters in Nashua have been doing it for six decades. In fact, they pretty much invented the business. In 1951, when war production was still mainly about bending metal, eleven engineers from Raytheon RTN +0.57% in neighboring Massachusetts set up a company to pursue opportunities in the infant industry of military electronics. They called it Sanders Associates after one of their own, and the following year it moved into an abandoned textile mill in Nashua.
Nashua was a struggling mill town that had seen its last textile factory “go south” in 1949. So the jobs that Sanders brought were welcome. Nobody realized at the time it would evolve to become the global leader in a new industry crucial to winning high-tech conflicts, or that its success would jump-start the economic revitalization of a depressed region. But it tells you something about how central electronic combat has become to modern warfare that a once-struggling mill town has repeatedly been voted the best place to live in America.
In the 1950s, Sanders pioneered techniques for protecting aircraft from detection by radar, and in the 1970s it became a leader in defending against infrared (heat-seeking) weapons. Since it understood better than anyone else how to defeat hostile sensors, it also became exceedingly skilled at figuring out how to overcome the countermeasures that enemies deployed against America’s own sensors. Today, 80% of America’s fixed-wing military aircraft and many of its other combat systems contain equipment made in New Hampshire that can negate an enemy’s defenses and assure U.S. forces have unfettered access to the spectrum.
Sanders was acquired by British military behemoth BAE Systems in 2000, and combined with another military electronics powerhouse it already owned called Tracor to fashion the foundation for what is now known as its Electronic Systems unit. But because the technology was so sensitive, it couldn’t be managed from a foreign capital — even one as friendly as London. So the operation is embedded in an American-run subsidiary called BAE Systems, Inc. that has a “special security agreement” and firewalls to prevent foreigners from peering into programs. In other words, the parent company sees the financials, but not the technology that underpins them.
Or at least, not all of the technology. Electronic Systems has become so big and diverse under corporate BAE’s leadership that some of what it produces is now sold in the commercial world. For instance, every Boeing BA +0.70% 777 jetliner contains equipment built by Electronic Systems. But the heart of the business remains its military electronics offerings, which have entered startling new realms with the transition from analog to digital technology that commenced in the 1980s. The continuous competition that America’s military wages against potential enemies for dominance of the spectrum involves technologies such as software-reconfigurable radios, multispectral sensors and cognitive countermeasures that most people are ill-equipped to grasp.
Which is just fine with the folks at Electronic Systems. They don’t want the rest of the world to understand the electronic warfare technology they have developed for the joint force’s stealthy fighters and will now apply to its next-generation bomber, because secrecy makes it easier to stay ahead. They’re happy to talk about their leading role in areas like night vision and frequency-hopping radios, but the closer you get to the cutting edge, the more reserved they become. I’ve been a consultant to the company for years, and I don’t know half of what the electronics unit does. I get the impression that is mainly by design.
It’s a curious thing when a company is as big as BAE Systems (it is the third biggest military contractor in the world) and still manages to keep so much of what it does secret. But that’s the nature of modern warfare. The less the enemy knows, the better off friendly forces are. So good luck finding out what the 11,000 employees at Electronic Systems are doing to defeat enemy sensors, weapons and command links from their laboratories in Nashua and elsewhere across the nation. This is one part of the struggle to defend democracy where America is winning, and BAE Systems intends to keep it that way.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenth...s-that-will-win-world-war-three/#4f16f50541fc
Electronic Systems is the biggest employer in New Hampshire, but you can be forgiven for not knowing that, because the business tries real hard to stay below the radar screen. And with good reason: it is the world leader in technologies used to dominate and exploit the electromagnetic spectrum, technologies many experts think could decide the outcome of future wars. BAE technologies don’t just help U.S. warfighters communicate, navigate and sense in the fog of war; they prevent enemies from doing the same, so that their military forces are deaf, dumb and blind in combat.
It’s called electronic warfare, and the people at Electronic Systems headquarters in Nashua have been doing it for six decades. In fact, they pretty much invented the business. In 1951, when war production was still mainly about bending metal, eleven engineers from Raytheon RTN +0.57% in neighboring Massachusetts set up a company to pursue opportunities in the infant industry of military electronics. They called it Sanders Associates after one of their own, and the following year it moved into an abandoned textile mill in Nashua.
Nashua was a struggling mill town that had seen its last textile factory “go south” in 1949. So the jobs that Sanders brought were welcome. Nobody realized at the time it would evolve to become the global leader in a new industry crucial to winning high-tech conflicts, or that its success would jump-start the economic revitalization of a depressed region. But it tells you something about how central electronic combat has become to modern warfare that a once-struggling mill town has repeatedly been voted the best place to live in America.
In the 1950s, Sanders pioneered techniques for protecting aircraft from detection by radar, and in the 1970s it became a leader in defending against infrared (heat-seeking) weapons. Since it understood better than anyone else how to defeat hostile sensors, it also became exceedingly skilled at figuring out how to overcome the countermeasures that enemies deployed against America’s own sensors. Today, 80% of America’s fixed-wing military aircraft and many of its other combat systems contain equipment made in New Hampshire that can negate an enemy’s defenses and assure U.S. forces have unfettered access to the spectrum.
Sanders was acquired by British military behemoth BAE Systems in 2000, and combined with another military electronics powerhouse it already owned called Tracor to fashion the foundation for what is now known as its Electronic Systems unit. But because the technology was so sensitive, it couldn’t be managed from a foreign capital — even one as friendly as London. So the operation is embedded in an American-run subsidiary called BAE Systems, Inc. that has a “special security agreement” and firewalls to prevent foreigners from peering into programs. In other words, the parent company sees the financials, but not the technology that underpins them.
Or at least, not all of the technology. Electronic Systems has become so big and diverse under corporate BAE’s leadership that some of what it produces is now sold in the commercial world. For instance, every Boeing BA +0.70% 777 jetliner contains equipment built by Electronic Systems. But the heart of the business remains its military electronics offerings, which have entered startling new realms with the transition from analog to digital technology that commenced in the 1980s. The continuous competition that America’s military wages against potential enemies for dominance of the spectrum involves technologies such as software-reconfigurable radios, multispectral sensors and cognitive countermeasures that most people are ill-equipped to grasp.
Which is just fine with the folks at Electronic Systems. They don’t want the rest of the world to understand the electronic warfare technology they have developed for the joint force’s stealthy fighters and will now apply to its next-generation bomber, because secrecy makes it easier to stay ahead. They’re happy to talk about their leading role in areas like night vision and frequency-hopping radios, but the closer you get to the cutting edge, the more reserved they become. I’ve been a consultant to the company for years, and I don’t know half of what the electronics unit does. I get the impression that is mainly by design.
It’s a curious thing when a company is as big as BAE Systems (it is the third biggest military contractor in the world) and still manages to keep so much of what it does secret. But that’s the nature of modern warfare. The less the enemy knows, the better off friendly forces are. So good luck finding out what the 11,000 employees at Electronic Systems are doing to defeat enemy sensors, weapons and command links from their laboratories in Nashua and elsewhere across the nation. This is one part of the struggle to defend democracy where America is winning, and BAE Systems intends to keep it that way.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenth...s-that-will-win-world-war-three/#4f16f50541fc
