Defense contractor and electronics heavyweight extraordinaire Raytheon will build a new manufacturing and testing plant in Alabama. A project of the missile division of Raytheon will occupy the building. Raytheon Missile Systems has been a mainstay in Tucson, Arizona for half a century. The Tucson location won’t be closing. Raytheon is one of the world’s largest defense contractors, and has regularly led the way in other fields, especially in electronic technology.
A new shop in Tucson just was not happening
From an article in Business Week, Raytheon needed a new facility to design, build, and test a new ship defense system and a ship borne interceptor missile. (It would blow up incoming missiles.) A new state-of-the-art facility wouldn’t be feasible in Tucson because of zoning, schedule and other requirements that weren’t able to be met. They picked Huntsville, Ala., from a small list of cities. The groundbreaking and construction will start soon for the $ 75 million, 70,000 square foot building. That’s bound to have some fairly high mortgage payments.
The laser like focus of Raytheon
The Star Wars project made Ronald Reagan a laughingstock, but Raytheon is making laser weapons work. The company is working on a laser defense system that can take down Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs) with impunity, and perhaps eventually aircraft. The laser was tested , as outlined by CNET, and the laser shot 4 UAV drones right down. The high intensity beam causes the targets to burst into flames in moments and drop from the sky.
Longstanding tradition of excellence
Raytheon has been on the cutting edge of engineering for a long time, aside from their defense work. It was Raytheon (then the American Appliance Company) that first developed a gas filled vacuum tube that could power radios by plugging them to the wall, instead of a battery. (Some nevertheless insist vacuum tubes provide the best sound.) Among other Raytheon innovations were radar for naval vessels and the microwave oven.
Additional info at these websites
news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10004204.html?tag=mncol
businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9H3GKRO0.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon
