John F. Morton: DomPrep.com interviewed Hugo Poza, vice president of Raytheon's Homeland Security business, a position he has held since June 2002. The company's major programs, products, and initiatives under Poza's jurisdiction include Biometricsentification, Cyber Security, Incident Command System, Explosives Detection, and Data Mining/Warehousing/Analysis/Correlation. Previously, Mr. Poza was vice president and general manager of Strategic Systems in Raytheon's Command, Control, Communication, and Information Systems (C3I) business. T.I.P.S. Download

JFM: Mr. Poza, welcome to DomPrep. Hugo Poza: Glad to be here and talking to you.

JFM: As the nation's fifth largest defense contractor, Raytheon is now in the homeland security business. How big an adjustment has that been for the company? HP: Right after 9/11 we put together some of our best engineering talent to see how we could bring to bear our technologies, and the products we have in the defense industry, to play in the homeland-security arena. A lot of taxpayer money that has already been paid for the technologies and the products developed for our defense customers are now applicable in a different arena.

JFM: Now, have you got some specific examples, like what you do via JPS Communications? [Raytheon acquired JPS Communications in December 2002. HP: Yes, you know communications interoperability, which was the basic reason for our buying JPS, is now not only a very important part of homeland security, but it's also becoming a very important part of the transformation of the military, so that the services are able to talk to each other. There's a particular example in the case of JPS. There are many others. I'll share with you the example of Red Wolf, a product line that we've had for a while. It's a telecommunications intercept. Two or three years ago, theea was to use it to intercept drug communications and to be able to use it to convict. Well, gee, we thought, why can't you use that to intercept terrorist communication and convict?

JFM: Your procurements were with what department? HP: Department of Justice. Can it be used by DHS [Department of Homeland Security] for grabbing and convicting terrorists? Absolutely. Now, it has to be geared toward a different type of environment, but the gearing is on the order of "ten percent" rather than starting from scratch. There's a lot that already comes from the defense and the intelligence world that can be used now, and all it needs is a little tweaking.

JFM: What division in Raytheon is doing the tweaking? I mean, how are you organized for homeland security? HP: What we did in putting homeland security together was to designate it as a strategic business area, which I manage for the entire company. I do not have specialist engineers. I do not have specialist technology. But I do have perhaps the sharpest talent in my operational systems engineers. We add value by taking the products of the company and other companies and putting them together to give our customers the best solutions to their problems. So we are really mission systems integrators in the total sense of the word.

JFM: Now, if I am a law enforcement, fire and rescue, or emergency management procurement official, where is my point of contact at Raytheon? HP: Your contact is here at Raytheon Homeland Security. Tom Hudson, our director of homeland security, will take you ultimately to the businesses-the engineers that design and produce the product that will be part of your solution. Raytheon Homeland Security combines all the products in the company. Homeland Security does not sell products. We sell solutions. It is my responsibility to go into the rest of the company and get all the businesses to work together. In many of the programs, we are working, three, four, five different businesses of Raytheon, in addition to working with other people and companies that provide things that Raytheon can't provide.

JFM: You talked about radio communications interoperability. What other kinds of homeland-security market segments are you focusing on? HP: The first segment parallels the Department of Homeland Security Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. We provide intelligence, cyber-security, things of that nature. So, for example, we are a member of the Northrop Grumman team for the Homeland Secure Data Network [HSDN]. We won HSDN with Northrop Grumman, and we provide Northrop Grumman with network security. We do border security, transportation security, high-value-facility security, and access management. So, we are a team member of the Accenture team for US-VISIT [United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology] and provide expertise in systems engineering, in biometrics, systems architecture, and deployment areas. And we are doing border security outside this country.

In the emergency-response arena, we have the first award of our incident command system [ICS] to be used by fire departments and police departments, and you are going to see a lot more of what we call e.ICS(tm) to provide hand-held equipment to communicate not only through satellite but also to the core of the building, basements, etc., etc.

JFM: When will that be announced? HP: Launch customer should be announced within the next month.

JFM: What else? HP: We also have tied to e.ICS(TM) another initiative called the Emergency Patient Tracking System [EPTS], which allows authorities to keep track of all the people who are hurt during a disaster, where people have gone, what hospitals, what the maladies are, their situation, and so on.

JFM: What about syndromic surveillance? HP: The Emergency Patient Tracking System is actually being used in the City of St. Louis, where all 36 hospitals can communicate part of the syndromic status to start putting data together. EPTS is being used among the hospitals to keep the data going. And it's being tried out in the State of Michigan and other localities. It's being used right now as a test method for containment.

JFM: In the homeland-security market, you indicated that your customers at the moment are primarily in DHS, but with e.ICS(tm) and EPTS you're dealing with local law enforcement and hospital administration. HP: I would say now that 90 percent of our customers are federal-level. I think that with the launch awards starting now at the local, city, and state levels, in the next year you'll see a tremendous growth in awards from big city fire departments, police departments-and state police departments. These are for equipment that allows them to communicate with each other and maintain a rational communications command scenario, as well as use intelligence to tell them about scenarios of criminals and terrorists. We have some competitions going on right now for equipment to enable state police to intercept communications and use intelligence on the people that they are going after.

JFM: What do you have to say about how Raytheon is addressing standards across all these different jurisdictions? HP: You know, that is a very, very important issue. The City of New York has conditions of contracts that are different than those of the City of St. Louis. Trust me, we are just starting, but the way we are handling it right now is to define a product or system or solution that is standard, and then, to satisfy the particularities, we will modify, we will integrate differently. We bring 90 percent of a solution as a standard piece-with a standard price-and then we focus on the ten percent that needs to be modified to satisfy the particularities-which will have an extra price.

JFM: How are you rising to the challenge of developing relationships with 20,000 different procurement authorities nationwide? HP: First and foremost, we are not trying to go after all 20,000. We are trying to look at the market leaders: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Phoenix, Chicago. Those are the ones that the rest will look up to. To do that, we are leveraging the established relationships that JPS already has. We are using their example, their personnel, their knowledge.

JFM: Finally, I should ask what are you doing about the international homeland-security market? HP: Our attention is focused principally on the areas of border security and access management. You know, the U.S. government is coming out with a program called America's Shield, which really refers to northern and southern border with Canada and Mexico. In addition to that we have the US-VISIT program, which controls the access of visitors in and out of the country. We want to know when they come in and when they go out, and that's the information that US-VISIT will give us over a ten-year period.

Well, the U.K. wants to have a U.K. e-Borders, which would be the English version of US-VISIT. Japan wants to have what they call Japan VISIT. Guess what? It's their version of US-VISIT. Same thing for China-the People's Republic. Countries in the Middle East--you can imagine how important border control is to them. So this is an international market. Absolutely, Positively.

JFM: Mr. Poza, thanks very much for your time. I know that our T.I.P.S. readers will find your answers very interesting.