Raytheon [RTN] is doing about $1 billion in annual sales in its security business and can do even better by honing its focus across the company and seeking broader market growth, the company’s new executive responsible for growing its homeland security business says.
“Some of the business units have been more opportunistic and not consistently focused on this and that’s something I aim to change” by targeting countries and agencies where there is either a lot of business or need for Raytheon’s capabilities, Brian Seagrave, vice president for Homeland Security at Raytheon, tells TR2 recently.
Raytheon’s win last fall of the United Kingdom’s $1.4 billion visitor management system called e-Borders was the company’s biggest win so far in the security space. Raytheon is also developing next-generation radiation and nuclear detection monitors for the Department of Homeland Security and is a teammate of Accenture’s [ACN] in the U.S. visitor management program called U.S. VISIT. The company is also working on a host of smaller development and installation projects, such as coastal surveillance, in the security area in both the U.S. and international markets.
The e-Border win has helped open doors for Raytheon in countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East which are also seeking visitor management systems, Seagrave says. William Swanson, Raytheon’s chairman and CEO, has said the company is also pursuing two significant opportunities in Saudi Arabia. One of those is for an integrated border security system that involves physical and technological elements and the other involves everything from equipping a border security force to ensuring they have a national C4ISR capability.
The theme here is that over the next couple of years there will likely be more large opportunities for Raytheon outside of the U.S., Seagrave says. In addition to visitor management and border security, there will be others like coastal surveillance and container security, he says. The company has already installed coastal surveillance systems for countries with coastlines in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea for things like fisheries protection and counter-narcotics, he adds.
In the U.S. there will still be plenty of opportunities for the company at the federal, state and local levels, as well as with airports and seaports, Seagrave says. Raytheon has been installing a perimeter intrusion detection system (PIDS) for four airports run by the Port of New York/New Jersey under a $100-million plus contract it won in March 2006. That contract involves the integration of various cameras, radars and other sensors to include intelligent video, all of it linked to a command and control system that provides automatic alarms.
The Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) organization, which oversees four airports in the Los Angeles County area including Los Angeles International, is putting together a program that will involve perimeter detection and access control, which Seagrave calls PIDS Plus.
“LAWA is thinking about the whole threat and is looking for an integrator that will provide an integrated solution that addresses all of it,” he says.
Another key attribute to the e-Borders win was that it helped to make other aware that Raytheon is more than just a defense company. It can offer security solutions as well, Seagrave says. The education campaign needs to continue but “as we keep moving forward this brand is going to start to be associated with excellence in security as well as in defense,” he says.
Seagrave, who assumed his current job in February, has three main responsibilities. One is to define the company’s strategy in the security space, which will help align its capabilities with civil security needs worldwide. The second is finding a way to understand and bring together Raytheon’s broad capabilities across the company in the security space. Finally he needs to identify and develop the large security opportunities that exist in various agencies and countries.
Tying together Raytheon’s broad range of capabilities that can be brought to bear in the security sector against an impressive range of customers and potential solutions both in the U.S. and internationally is a tall order, which is why Seagrave says segmenting the market in different ways and looking for those intersections offers the biggest opportunities.
“We’re looking at segmenting the market by security missions,” he says. “By that I mean border security, visitor management, aviation security, port security, container security. And then also segmenting it by geographical area and what we’re looking for is the intersections of clients that recognize the need in several of those missions and have the wherewithal and intent to address that need. And so where we find that intersection of need and several missions we’re going to be putting a very heavy focus.”