Raytheon's Big Bet on Gallium Nitride Tech Pays Huge Dividends

Dan Goure

Raytheon, Defense, Technology, Aerospace, Navy, Army, Air Force, Radars, United States, Russia, Asia, China, Europe

Gallium nitride provides increased power and sensitivity for systems such as antennas while reducing their size and cost. 

Last week, Raytheon was awarded a $1 billion contract by the U.S. Navy to continue its work on Increment 1 of the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ). This continued what has been an impressive winning streak for the company on major acquisition programs. In winning the NGJ, Raytheon beat the long-time incumbent in the airborne jammer business, Northrop Grumman.  In 2013, it won the contest to design and build the Air and Missile Defense Radar, a replacement for the venerable Aegis radar that had been the centerpiece of U.S. Navy’s air and missile defense capability for decades.

In a tangentially related area, last September Raytheon won a $1 billion five-year contract to provide enhanced cyber protection for some 100 civil agencies and departments of the U.S. government. In 2014, Raytheon, a latecomer to the subject, beat Boeing for the right to build the Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals (FAB-T) that will provide secure strategic and non-strategic command, control and communications that support the President and his combatant commanders when they direct nuclear and tactical forces.  Most recently, the company won against a strong field of competitors to build the Air Force’s 3-D Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) system intended to provide long-range, ground-based radar for detecting, identifying and tracking aircraft and missiles (the award is currently in protest).

A major reason for Raytheon’s string of successes has been its willingness to make patient investments in critical enabling technologies. The successful NGJ bid was, according to Raytheon sources, the result of the company’s ability to leverage its ongoing investments in airborne radio frequency systems, jamming techniques, combat-proven antenna array technology, and sophisticated, solid-state electronics. Similarly, in the FAB-T competition, Raytheon began far behind Boeing but invested in the people, enabling technologies and processes that allowed it to deliver a superior product at a very affordable price.