With a $3b contract, Raytheon charts a new course

The DD(X) warship is part of a strategy that will market the defense contractor as a one-stop shop for the Pentagon -- and create jobs


WALTHAM -- Raytheon Co. has long peddled its roster of defense and aerospace products separately, from radars to computing networks. But when the company corralled a $3 billion Navy contract last May to develop a suite of interrelated systems for a new destroyer, it marked a watershed for a strategy that is reshaping the company's identity.

The strategy is called ''mission systems integration," or MSI as it's known at Raytheon's hillside corporate headquarters here. It means that the company, one of the state's largest private employers, is marketing itself to the Pentagon and other customers not as the supplier of a single product but as a general contractor for the various electronics systems that make up the brains of the military's high-tech weaponry.

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