Challenges in Defense Conversion

Abstract

It’s difficult to be the last speaker. So many of the important things have already been said. It is easy to say I agree with Bruce Cole of ESI on one issue or disagree with Henry Bachman of Hazeltine on another, but I will try to provide my view on the issues which have been discussed. ERA is a company of about 300 people and is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. We are a subsidiary of E-Systems. E-Systems is a $2 billion dollar corporation, exclusively a defense electronics firm. From a size standpoint, we are somewhere in between a small company like Signal Science and a larger company like ESL. We made the decision to diversify in about 1990, in a very similar fashion to what Bruce described. We went through the thinking process very much like what Henry described and that was: ”How do we take corporate competencies and apply them to new markets?” So I think the ERA’s paradigm is pretty much the same as ESL.