Raytheon Company‘s (RTN) unit Raytheon BBN Technologies has received funding worth $2.5 million from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (“IARPA”) through U.S. Army Research Laboratory (“ARL”). This grant was a part of the ARL’s METAPHOR program.
Per the agreement, the company will produce tools and techniques to recognize, qualify and classify metaphors. It will also manufacture a metaphor repository system to categorize and link the main constituents of linguistic metaphors to conceptual metaphors, and create a wholly functional metaphorical language analysis tool.
The METAPHOR program is a two-phase program. In the first phase, experts will create automatic tools and techniques to recognize, define and classify linguistic metaphors related to target ideas and embedded in native-language text. The resultant conceptual metaphors will be authenticated via empirical social science methods. In the second part, the program will characterize the cultural perspectives associated with the research, especially those that are of interest to the Intelligence Community. Later, the experts will structure the findings to disclose the contrastive stand.
We believe that the U.S. defense establishment is presently upgrading its intelligence mechanisms to tackle global terrorism networks and intercept foreign colloquial as well as code languages. As a result, the ARL is developing a strong foreign language database system to understand and to decode the local languages. Apart from that, U.S. is an important player in United Nations Peace Keeping Missions along with its other allies. This newly-installed metaphor mechanism will help U.S. diplomats and defense forces to communicate with indigenous groups. Thus, they can utilize local intelligence to reach the target.
Like its peers, Raytheon also depends on the U.S. Department of Defense (“DoD”) contracts. At the end of the first quarter of 2012, the U.S. DoD contracts contributed 74% of the company’s total revenue. We believe over dependence on the U.S. defense contracts could impact the future performance of the company, due to the current defense spending cutbacks.
Raytheon Company currently retains a Zacks #3 Rank, which translates into a short-term Hold rating.
Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Company is a leader in technology and innovation, specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. The company provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services. The company competes with Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC).
