Homegrown Defense Firm Proving Mettle in Global Theater

By George Berkheimer, STAFF WRITER

Defense contractor Raytheon Solipsys began its existence inconspicuously enough in 1996 as Solipsys Inc., a small "boutique" aerospace software developer.
But it's taken the company less than a decade to prove its capabilities in detecting airborne threats to the nation's security, which put it on the fast track to becoming a major contributor to force protection, battlefield strategy and homeland security efforts both at home and worldwide.
David Buscher, an electrical engineer whose career spanned 17 years at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, founded Solipsys in partnership with a pair of colleagues. The company soon found its calling in the days following 9/11, when the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) called on it to tie together and network military and civilian air traffic control systems, something that had never before been attempted.
Solipsys came through in just 45 days, and NORAD is still using the solution today.
A year after 9/11, the trio sold their business to Raytheon Co. for $200 million. Since that time, Solipsys' customer base has grown to include the nation's four armed services, the Missile Defense Agency, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Iceland Defense Force and the Italian Navy.

Different Paradigm
Since 2007, Raytheon Solipsys has operated out of its new headquarters in Maple Lawn, and the company has vastly expanded its collection of services, products and solutions.
According to President Mark Trenor, Raytheon Solipsys is lighter on its feet, flexible and more responsive to defense needs than many of its competitors.
"When you're doing things on a time-material basis, it's not particularly profitable and not easy to grow the business," he said. "We're able to put our profit back into growing new software. It's a different paradigm than what's normally seen in defense procurement."
As opposed to the more prevalent contractor arrangement in which the government owns all of the data rights, Raytheon Solipsys is more aligned to the commercial paradigm, retaining ownership of the software and licensing it to the government.
"This gives us total control over how to evolve our products," Trenor said, making the company more profitable and giving it greater opportunities to reinvest.
The company grew from $33 million in sales in 2004 to more than $58 million in 2007.
Although out of the picture for the most part, Buscher still performs work for Raytheon Solipsys on occasion in the international export regulations arena.
"They continue to release new products and push the state-of-the-art in [fields] the company has been heavily involved in from the beginning," he said. "The idea is to sell commodities to the government, rather than create something new from scratch each time. The problem is to break the government's mindset of doing business as usual."

Recent Developments
In the last four months, Raytheon Solipsys has announced the release or deployment of several new systems that will improve the command, control and training environments for its end users.
A three-dimensional extension announced in June for the company's Tactical Display Framework (TDF), a real-time visualization capability used in command and control, homeland defense, surveillance and air traffic management systems, gives users a 3-D view of battlespace.
"The operator can offset, slide and fly through the view, orbit the area of interest, zoom and auto-track objects," Trenor said, bringing three dimensions to strategic and tactical situational awareness, and decision making.
According to Raytheon Solipsys Spokesman Mike Nason, TDF has become the standard in command and control display systems used in many military applications, including the U.S. Air Force AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System Aircraft), the U.S. Central Command Air Forces' Battle Control Center and the U.S. Navy's Zumwalt-class destroyer.
The software is written in Java programming language for maximum portability.

Airspace Management
Two other software products developed by Solipsys are now key components of a recently fielded system managing airspace in Iraq.
The Battlespace Command and Control Center (BC3) employed by Central Command for airspace management in Iraq uses the company's advanced track fusion engine, Multi-Source Correlator Tracker (MSCT) and tactical visualization powered by the TDF.
Since its deployment to Iraq, BC3 successfully completed operational testing and was fielded in February this year to improve management of U.S. and coalition air traffic in Iraq.
"The Air Force is better able to manage airspace - by integrating multiple radars and displaying all the traffic," said Trenor. "Management controllers and mission crews have gained a much more detailed view of aircraft flying in an active Iraqi war zone. Also, it has the capability to integrate ground movements in the future."
BC3 was designed, built, tested and delivered in less than a year by a team of contractors working for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Battle Lab with Global War on Terrorism funding. The system includes two mobile training systems designed to train U.S. Air Force crews in the U.S. and Europe who will be deploying to Iraq.

Local Shift
Last month, Raytheon Solipsys expanded its solution set for air traffic management with the release of a new simulation and training tool. VECTOR, the acronym for Virtual Environment for Collaborative Training and Operational Readiness, provides a dynamic environment for developing and executing training scenarios.
"[It] provides - a simplified operator interface to create real-world scenarios in a matter of minutes - at both tactical and strategic levels," Trenor said.
The solutions offered by Solipsys aren't limited to military applications, though. In May, the company demonstrated its information fusion, tracking and display capabilities to attendees of the Law Enforcement Equipment and Technology Expo in El Paso, Texas.
According to Trenor, the ability to fuse information from disparate sources into a common operational picture addresses a critical need identified by first responders, homeland defense and civil defense organizations. The company is currently working in seven states with National Guard and emergency services to determine their needs and how Raytheon Solipsys can answer them.
"We're working very closely at the state level in Maryland and will eventually work our way down to the county level," Trenor said. "We hope to be moving in that direction in a month or two."
In other words, after more than a decade of paying attention to the big picture and developing solutions used nationally and around the world, Raytheon Solipsys is now training its sights on first responders who are literally just down the road.
Given the necessary funding, "This is something that we could do in Howard County or any other local jurisdiction," Trenor said. "We can help them set up a command center or whatever they need to better leverage and better effect their mission."