ALAN DRON

Finding the needle of vital information amid a haystack of superfluous detail for military commanders will be a task to which Raytheon will increasingly apply itself in the near future, two of its senior executives said at the show.

"We're in information overload," admits Stephen Teel, vice-president, C3I business development manager. "We have more bytes of information available to users than they could possibly use.

Decisions

"There's a need to filter data and get the data-set down to the bare minimum needed by the warfighter or user, so they have the common operational picture of the battlespace with sufficient detail to make command decisions.

"They need to know when to fire and when to re-task assets to go back and do bomb damage assessment, or to reassign their logistics chain.

"We are very experienced in working with very large databases and finding that needle in the haystack. That's had more emphasis since 11 September – finding the bad guys."

It is now recognised that if parts of the US intelligence machine had been able to pull together disparate fragments of information, it is just possible that the events of 11 September could have been avoided.

Current acronym ‘flavour of the month' is ISR, or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and Raytheon intends to be to the fore in supplying the need for focused information.

Restructuring

"In Europe – particularly in the UK – there's a large set of ISR programmes. Most of them are in the classified world. We're very interested in those and are pursuing them."

Dr Terry Heil, senior vice-president of Raytheon Systems, concurs: "The emphasis on ISR work will become more important, primarily within the USA, but the classified programmes we're planning to pursue in the UK are certainly strengthened in terms of financial support because of 11 September."

Both men will have new job titles in a few weeks, as Raytheon goes through the restructuring announced just before Farnborough. The current organisation will be reorganised into a flatter structure, says Heil.

Source: Flight Daily News