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Defense industry boosts prospects for state’s economic growth
By Andrew J. Manuse
MetroWest Daily
February 12, 2006
When Waltham-based Raytheon Co. designed the radar technology that gave the British and Allied forces the "most important military advantage" over the Germans and other Axis powers in World War II, a link between the defense and technology industries in Massachusetts was established.
Raytheon was founded in 1922 in Cambridge by former roommates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company, which started with a failed attempt to market a refrigeration device, became popular with its technology that gave Americans the capability to plug in their radios rather than rely on batteries.
But it was the company’s MIT connection that gave it access to Britain’s leading military scientists. It was the link that led to the development of practical radar systems and the company’s step into the defense industry. Since then, Raytheon has taken off, producing both key consumer products, such as the microwave, and key military technologies, such as missile guidance systems.
The rest of Massachusetts’ defense industry has also grown with close ties to the research labs at the state’s universities, according to several industry experts. These same labs have also contributed to the growth of Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, aka Natick Labs, which in turn have helped the industry grow further, the experts said.
A major step toward the state’s defense technology industry’s current path, highlighted last week by Ranch Kimball, the state’s secretary of economic development, came after the Pentagon threatened to close Hanscom and Natick Labs along other bases around the country.
At least 33,000 jobs are tied to Natick and Hanscom, but up to 85,000 jobs contribute to the defense industry here, Kimball said at a conference on the Army’s Future Combat System last Monday. Several of the state’s leaders, including Sen. Ted Kennedy and Gov. Mitt Romney, realized that if the bases closed, the defense technology industry here would be at risk of shrinking.
Out of that fear came the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative (MassDTI), which is supported by the Waltham-based Massachusetts High Technology Council. The initiative successfully convinced the Pentagon to keep Natick and Hanscom open last year, by explaining how Massachusetts "has the critical mass, breadth and depth of intellectual capability to best serve the next generation of military technology," according to Alan Macdonald, executive director of MassDTI.
"How we compete nationally and internationally as a (state) economy is being able to serve as a hub for the development of next-generation, innovative technologies," Macdonald said. "We would acknowledge there are other good places to do this in the country, but Massachusetts is the best."
Macdonald said once MassDTI helped save Hanscom and Natick, the organization’s leaders realized that the state did not have a group supporting the companies, large and small, which operate within the defense industry here.
So now, the group will build off its win with the Pentagon "to continue to coordinate internally and create a community of defense technology companies," Macdonald said. One way to do that is to identify the companies that are here, and help some of the smaller companies with next-generation technologies for sale in the private sector find their way into the government market, he said.
While MassDTI looks to expand the defense industry here, the defense industry overall is changing. Not coincidentally, it’s changing in a way that accommodates the expertise that Massachusetts companies and universities can provide, according to U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Lowell, a House Armed Services Committee member.
"The threats our military faces in this post-Cold War period are different than anything we’ve ever faced before and require new types of war-fighting technology to combat them," Meehan said in an interview Friday. "One of the key areas of defense transformation and one I strongly support is providing our forces with information superiority over our enemies. Much of the work being done in Massachusetts is supporting that goal."
The Army unveiled its Future Combat System to Massachusetts last Monday, which is one example why the defense industry is needed here, he said.
The state’s "top-tiered research universities, cutting-edge technology companies and Department of Defense research facilities all play a critical role" in designing the military force of the future, he said.
Natick Labs, one of the Defense Department’s leading research facilities, is behind what the war fighter wears, carries, eats and lives in, according to Len Dube, assistant for business alliances to the director of the center.
"By our presence here, we’re able to bring in younger student graduates of the sciences," said Dube. "They in turn can bring the technology (they develop here) back outside. It’s a great flow in of brain power and flow out of scientific successes."
Dube said various companies use the center to develop products for both the private sector and the military, and the center pays out about $37 million in contracts to companies in Massachusetts. If a company uses one of the Army’s patented technologies to create a private-sector product, the Army gets a cut of the profit that it can then put back into more research, he said.
Foster-Miller Inc. is one of the companies doing a lot of work with the center.
Doug Thomson, director of inter-corporate growth for the Waltham-based company founded by MIT students, said the firm has worked on "numerous soldier garments of the future," which may also have relevance to the medical industry in the private sector.
The company has designed uniforms for soldiers operating helicopters and Humvees in the desert, with liquid-circulation cooling systems built in to them. Temperatures can hit 120 degrees and go even higher inside a helicopter, Thomson said. The vest doesn’t just provide comfort, it also provides safety and alertness, he said.
The company is also working on a uniform device called the War Fighter Physiological Status Monitor, with Malden Mills in Lawrence. The device, which monitors a soldier’s vital signs, could also be incorporated into clothing for heart-attack patients, he said.
The company also designs the Talon Robot that disposes bombs. It’s used by bomb squads in the military as well as bomb squads protecting the homeland, he said.
Thomson said that Foster-Miller, which employs more than 300 people, has always dedicated most of its business to the defense industry, but it used to be 55 percent of the business. Now it’s about 70 percent, he said. It’s not that the commercial end of the company’s business has shrunk, said Thomson, it’s that the product business to support ongoing war efforts has gone up.
The same goes for Protonex Technology Corp., which employs more than 30 people in Southborough and makes portable fuel-cell power supplies, according to the company’s chief executive, Scott Pearson.
"Our primary business is military today and our strategy is to focus heavily on the military and use that progress to get into commercial markets," Pearson said. "By doing something for the military, you take many steps that lead to doing something for the commercial world."
Protonex, which is devoting more resources to the commercial end of things this year, is focusing on the growing trend toward "clean-energy" to power laptops and the like.
The MathWorks Inc. in Natick is one of the companies supplying resources to the Army’s Future Combat Systems program, a potentially $120 billion modernization effort aimed at automating much of the military’s operations, according to a list prepared by MassDTI. Massachusetts is slated for $6.8 billion of the Future Combat System money for research and development, which will also help the industry grow here, according to MassDTI.
Rebecca Porter, a spokeswoman for The MathWorks, said the company’s key software products, MATLAB for technical computing and Simulink for model-based design, are used by engineers in both the military and private sector to develop hardware and systems.
The MathWorks, which employs 900 in Massachusetts out of 1,200 worldwide, sells most of its software licenses to companies in the aerospace and defense industry, she said. The automotive, financial and biotech industries aren’t far behind, however.
According to an informal count by MassDTI, Masachusetts has 210 companies in the defense industry. However, this is "by no means the absolute universe of Massachusetts defense companies," Macdonald said. "This is something we’re working on, something Ranch Kimball is working on, something we’re trying to coordinate."
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