Raytheon Technologies' chief executive told analysts during a quarterly earnings call today that he hopes the company will "have some interesting opportunities" to partner with the Air Force this year on defensive systems against hypersonics.
Greg Hayes also said he expects the service will move forward with both boost-glide and cruise missile weapons capabilities, following comments from Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall last week in which he stressed the need to do “what’s most cost effective for us” in the hypersonics realm and avoid “mirror-imaging the potential threats” from China.
The company is involved in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s effort on the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, with Raytheon and Northrop Grumman completing a free-flight test of its demonstrator in September.
Though Hayes expressed confidence that air-breathing and boost-glide technologies “are going to be funded” in the future, he said the most important element involves defensive systems.
“I think those are the things that will provide us the biggest opportunity, whether that’s going to be directed energy, some anti-hypersonic glide vehicles, things that we’re working on,” he added. “There’s a lot of money being devoted to this.”
While he noted most of those efforts and individual technologies are classified, Hayes said any defense would amount to “a layered” one, in which officials leverage ground- and ship-based capabilities “as well as potentially directed energy.”
“We’re going to continue to work on that with the Air Force this year and we’ll hopefully have some interesting opportunities as the year unfolds,” he said.
DOJ pricing investigation
A Raytheon executive said the company has made progress in its own ongoing investigation of defective pricing of several contracts, with officials determining “there’s a probable risk of liabilities for damages, interest and penalties.”
The internal probe, which relates to the company's legacy integrated defense systems business, which is now part of the missiles and defense unit, stems from a Justice Department investigation into contracts won by Raytheon’s missiles and defense business.
Company officials during an April 2021 call with analysts said the investigation had been focused on three contracts between 2011 and 2013, but that Raytheon, as part of the same investigation, had received another, separate subpoena in connection with a contract from 2017.
“We still do not currently believe the resolution of this matter will result in a material adverse impact to our financial condition,” Jennifer Reed, Raytheon’s vice president of investor relations, said today. “And we will continue to cooperate with the government’s investigation.”
The company announced that its 2021 fourth quarter sales totaled $17 billion, with sales for the full year reaching $64.4 billion.