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Raytheon
"We own
the kill chain."
CEO:
William H. Swanson
Defense
Contracts 2005: $9.1 billion
Campaign
contributions in 2004: $935,000
Headquarters: Waltham, MA
Website: http://www.raytheon.com/
Overview
Raytheon
is the fifth largest defense contractor in the United States.
By its own accounting, the company is involved in over 4,000
weapons programs and the Massachusetts-based conglomerate
received more than $8.5 billion in Pentagon contracts in FY
2004.
After Congress
released the first full “war on terrorism” military
budget in 2002, Tom Culligan, one of Raytheon’s Vice
Presidents, rejoiced, saying, “we are pleased with the
results of the work done by the House and Senate conferees…
you see Raytheon’s brand name everywhere – from
tanks and rifles to ships, aircraft and UAVs [unmanned aerial
vehicles],” which all received increased funding in
the fiscal year 2002 Pentagon budget.
Since then,
billion dollar contracts have continued to flow and by the
end of first quarter of 2005, Raytheon announced net sales
of $4.9 billion, an increase of $200 million over the same
period last year.
Raytheon
is best-known for the Patriot
air defense missile, which received massive publicity
during the 1991 Gulf conflict when it was used to defend against
Iraqi Scud missiles. Analyses performed after the conflict
by Dr. Theodore Postol of MIT indicated that the Patriot was
far less accurate than U.S. officials originally claimed.
In fact, the missile missed its target more often than not.
Since then, the Pentagon has spent $3 billion improving the
missile system and foreign sales of the improved system account
for a significant portion of Raytheon’s overseas sales.
Another
high visibility Raytheon system is the Tomahawk
land attack missile, described in promotional literature
as the “Navy’s weapon of choice.”
The company is proud of the Tomahawk’s combat record,
noting on their website that Tomahawks have been used in “Operation
Desert Storm, Bosnia, Iraq and Kosovo. Over 300 Tomahawks
were used in Operation Desert Storm alone. Since Desert Storm
in 1991, more than 1,000 Tomahawks have been fired.”
More than
50 of the missiles- which (depending on their capabilities)
cost between $600,000 to $1 million each- were fired in the
opening salvo of the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
The U.S. used even more- as many as 800- in the first hours
of the attack against Iraq.
The company’s
“bunker buster” weapons, like their GBU-28,
a 5,000-pound bomb and missiles like the TOW,
Maverick
and Javelin,
all of which were used in “Operation Enduring Freedom”
in Afghanistan and “Operation Liberate Iraq.”
The sensors
and radar Raytheon built for unmanned and manned reconnaissance
airplanes were used extensively in both wars. They call their
latest line of radar, surveillance, and targeting systems
“the Terminator family.”
Fueling Conflict
around the World
Raytheon
is a major arms exporter, with billions in overseas arms sales
in the past decade to a client list that includes Israel,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, Singapore,
Greece, Taiwan and South Korea.
Jim Maslowski,
vice president of International business says weapons sales
to foreign countries is "one of the key elements in our growth
strategy.” In 2004, foreign military sales at Raytheon
Missile Systems rose about 3 percent to $1.2 billion. Raytheon
has gone to great lengths to get international business, to
the point of scuttling federal regulations. In March 2003,
Raytheon agreed to pay $25 million in fines to settle charges
that it unlawfully tried to sell long-range microwave transmitters
to Pakistan from 1990 through 1997 when the government said
such sales were prohibited.
Raytheon
denied it intentionally violated U.S. export laws, but a spokesman
admitted that they failed to wait for the State Department
to determine whether the system was commercial or military.
Now that Pakistan is a close ally in the war on terrorism,
new Raytheon contracts are following. In May 2005, Pakistan
announced its intention to buy $46 million in Raytheon-manufactured
Sidewinder missiles.
CEO Pay and
Lay-offs
Raytheon
CEO William H. Swanson’s salary increased almost 20%
this year to $1.2 million, plus another $2.94 million in stock
awards. Meanwhile, 350 workers at Raytheon’s wire harness
plant in Wichita, Kansas were laid off in April when the company
subsidiarized the operation to Chihuahua, Mexico. Workers
at the plant were making $15-20 an hour.
Big Guns,
Big Money
Like other
major weapons makers, Raytheon makes a significant investment
in political influence and access in Washington. Since
2000, the firm has doled out more than $3.14 million in soft
money and Political Action Committee donations, ranking fifth
in donations among major defense contractors in the 2004 election
cycle.
The company
makes its political connections work in others was as well.
In the past seven years, Raytheon has hired 23 former senior
government officials, according to the independent Project
on Government Oversight. Overall, more than 200 former members
of Congress and senior government officials went through the
“revolving door” to work for defense contractors
says the organization’s July 2004 report.
High Stakes
Sleepovers
As the new
Department of Homeland Security was being established in 2001,
Secretary Tom Ridge visited his friend and former Bush-Cheney
fundraiser David Girard-diCarlo in Arizona. But in the course
of investigating Ridge, discovered The high profile lobbyist
was under contract with Raytheon at the time, and hired two
former Ridge employees to lobby at the Department of Homeland
Security. In June 2004, a team of companies that includes
Raytheon won a border protection contract from DHS worth up
to $10 billion.
This
research and report was compiled by Frida Berrigan of the
Arms
Trade Resource Center of the World
Policy Institute in January 2007 for the War
Resisters League's WIN
Magazine.
Aerospace
Contributions
This information is also
available as a printable, PDF
fact sheet!
Programs
and Products:
With
a name that means "light from the gods", Raytheon’s
active participation in designing space weapon technology
is not surprising – where better to derive power from
the gods than outer space?
Missile defense spending in the US has been very lucrative
for Raytheon. As one of the four top missile defense contractors,
its contracts nearly
tripled between 2001 and 2004, from $225 million to $647
million. Raytheon has produced a variety
of components of the US Ballistic Missile Defense system,
including sensors to detect enemy missiles (and satellites),
and kill vehicles that can knock them out of orbit.
One of Raytheon’s sensors, designed for the Missile
Defense Agency’s Space
Tracking and Surveillance System, detects possible enemy
satellites and relays data to missile interceptors.
Raytheon also provides sensors for the Sea-Based
X-Band radar, the Space-Based
Infrared System, and the Upgraded
Early Warning Radar, which track targets for the Ground-Based
Midcourse Defense system. In 2006 Raytheon received
a $114 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency to
implement the Upgraded Early Warning Radar program in Thule,
Greenland.
Under subcontract to Lockheed
Martin, Raytheon provides a radar system for the Terminal
High-Altitude Area Defense program. Raytheon’s
radar component is designed to detect and destroy incoming
ballistic missiles. Lockheed Martin also subcontracted
Raytheon to develop the Track
Illuminator Laser for the US Air Force’s Airborne
Laser program. This laser is designed to record information
about incoming ballistic missiles right when they are launched,
by projecting rapid, powerful pulses of light towards the
missile. The light is reflected back to a camera that
records data, which is used to obtain information about the
missile’s speed and elevation.
Raytheon also builds interceptors, which are objects designed
to take out enemy missiles or other space objects while they
are in orbit. Its Exoatmospheric
Kill Vehicle is designed to destroy ballistic missile
targets outside the atmosphere, while the missiles are in
flight. In addition, Raytheon is the lead
subcontractor to Northrop
Grumman on the eight-year, $4.5 billion Kinetic
Energy Interceptor project for the US Missile Defense
Agency. Kinetic Energy Interceptors have potential applications
as space-based (they do not have to be launced from the ground
in order to attack their targets) anti-satellite weapons,
as they are designed to knock out a variety of space objects.
Raytheon is developing the kill vehicle, while Northrop Grumman
is working on systems engineering and integration. Raytheon,
along with Alliant
Techsystems and Boeing,
also designed the Standard
Missile-3, a ballistic missile that destroys incoming
ballistic missiles outside the earth’s atomosphere.
It is an integral component of the Sea-based
Missile Defense System.
CorpWatch
has described Raytheon as a company that “loves big
noises and large civilian casualty counts.” While
missile defense or space warfare do not directly result in
casualties, per se, its aerospace contributions are nonetheless
in keeping with this assessment. The destruction of
commerical and military space assets, through deliberate attack
or space debris, would immeasurably disrupt civilian lives
around the world.
And let’s face it – missile defense is all about
big noises.
This research and report was
compiled by Ray Acheson of Reaching
Critical Will in February
2007 in coordination with the Secure
World Foundation.
More Profiles:
See Raytheon's original
Dirty Dozen profile.
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BAE Systems
Bechtel Corporation
Boeing
British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL)
General Dynamics
IBM
Lockheed Martin
Mitsubishi
Northrop Grumman
Siemens
University of California
Dirty Dozen Annex
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