Raytheon BBN Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Company (RTN), has received an additional $5.9 million contract from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”) under the Multilingual Automatic Document Classification, Analysis and Translation (“MADCAT”) program.
BBN Technologies has been successfully performing the program for four years. The business wing became a part of Raytheon in 2009. Then, in July 2010, it received an additional $6.14 million contract from DARPA under the MADCAT program. By then, it had completed two successful years of the program.
With its translation and distillation techniques, the company will integrate optical character recognition, develop novel methods to process handwritten text and will develop a laptop-deployable prototype translation system.
Foreign language translation is slow, expensive, erratic and difficult to access on the battlefield. Through this program, the company aims at creating a prototype system that provides precise, appropriate and distilled information to military commands and personnel.
With the system, foreign language text images, such as handwritten notes and machine-printed documents, will be automatically converted into English transcripts without manual help. The technology would also facilitate linguists and analysts to more effectively analyze any document.
The company has also received a $3.1 million contract from the U.S. Army’s Communications, Electronics, Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC), Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate to develop technology for Morphing Network Assets to Restrict Adversarial Reconnaissance (MORPHINATOR). Per this contract, the company will develop “cyber maneuver” techniques to thwart potential attackers in high-threat environments.
Cyber maneuver is the system in which characteristics and configurations of networks are modified in a manner that become undetectable and unpredictable by opponents and attackers but are convenient for network administrators.
The medley of contracts at Raytheon thus ranges from providing translation services to sophisticated cyber security solutions. Overall, the contract wins will lead to revenue growth. Going forward, we expect revenue and earnings growth to be driven by its strong presence in the areas of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, air & missile defense systems; border security; air traffic management; training and homeland security; and cyber security.
The company presently retains a short-term Zacks #2 Rank (Buy). The company mainly competes with L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL) and FLIR Systems Inc. (FLIR).
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