Seapower - May 2009

Raytheon is unique because we don’t build platforms, so we have a different set of specialties in those kinds of supply chains. True, there is some overlap in both worlds, but I think it’s a different picture if you’re in the platform world than if you’re in an electronic one.

What naval-related programs do you consider successes for your company?

SMITH: Zumwalt [DDG 1000] is by far, not just for the company, but for DoD [Department of Defense]. It’s been declared by DoD to be a model program. It’s been declared by the Navy to be a model program in front of Congress.

If you look at Air Warfare Destroyer in Australia, that’s an ongoing success. It’s not as mature as Zumwalt is yet, but they’re doing all the right things, learning from Zumwalt.

On a smaller scale, the radar programs that we do are good. Our mine warfare systems are doing very well right now. I think [we have] 1,200 programs in this business and probably 35 to 40 percent of them are Navy programs.

We’re winding down our participation in the Aegis program, but we had … 35 percent or so of the dollar value of Aegis. But that was last funded in 2006, so if we haven’t delivered [it yet], we’re just about to deliver the last ship set of that multiyear buy.

If more DDG 51 Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyers are built, would your company still have participation in Aegis that way? SMITH: I would believe so. It’s hard for Aegis to work without some high power.

LISA NIPP

Since the Navy wants to limit Zumwalt production, how is that going to affect your business in regard to producing the big combat systems and integrating them?

SMITH: It’s pure speculation at this point, not because we don’t know what the Navy wants to do, but because we don’t know what happens after that. For example, if the Navy produces three DDG 51s, that has a finite dollar value to us. If they produce 12, it’s something else. I don’t want to speculate about what it could be.

It’s important to understand that, for us and for other big players, none of these are ones and zeros. You’re not either in or you’re out, you’re in all of them just in different modes.

We believe that the Zumwalt combat system, which was designed on a clean sheet of paper as an open architecture combat system for which the Navy owns all of the code … will eventually find its way into whatever future service combatant [the Navy chooses].

Do you think that things like the Dual-Band Radar, the Mk57 launcher and the undersea warfare system that you put on the Zumwalt are transferable to other platforms?

SMI TH: Sure. The Dual-Band Radar is already going to the [Ford-class] carrier. If it can go to a carrier, it can go on the big amphibs.

The question becomes: Which platforms do you want or do you need? Unfortunately, it’s not a want question anymore. Do you need that capability? Once you make those decisions then it’s … which ones do you want or do you need missile-launching capability on? And the way Zumwalt was done, [with] 15 years of very rigorous thinking and design reviews [and] engineering analysis, has allowed each one of those [systems] to be modular. So you can, in fact, pick this piece out and put it somewhere else.

In terms of cost, the big advantage to the Zumwalt is it has 100 to 150 less people than a DDG 51, and people are the operating costs. So it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to engineer a legacy system to create that dramatic an impact on operating cost.