Extending its homeland security business overseas, Waltham defense giant Raytheon Co. yesterday signed a deal worth $1.35 billion over the next 10 years to help the United Kingdom control its borders.
Under the agreement, signed with the British Home Office, Raytheon will lead an industry consortium called Trusted Borders that will collect and analyze data on people traveling in and out of the nation by air, sea, and rail. The effort is part of the United Kingdom's e-Borders project in advance of the London Olympics in 2012.
The deal is important in two ways to Raytheon, which has a larger share of foreign sales than any other big Pentagon contractor. The operation it will run out of the London suburb of Uxbridge, near Heathrow Airport, will deploy techniques and technologies Raytheon could market to other countries. And it will raise the company's profile in the fast-growing field of homeland security - called "national security" in the United Kingdom - a key focus for Raytheon.
"We see this as a capability we're interested in forwarding to new countries interested in border control," said Mike Keebaugh, president of Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems unit in Garland, Texas, who was in London with Raytheon chief executive William H. Swanson yesterday to sign the deal. "Those countries could be in the European Union or they could be in Asia."
Shares edged up 8 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $61.84 yesterday.
Jon B. Kutler, founder and chief executive of Admiralty Partners, a Los Angeles private equity firm specializing in aerospace and defense, said verification technologies like those being pioneered in the e-Borders program are becoming increasingly attractive to countries that fear terrorism but want to keep borders open to visitors.
"This plays to Raytheon's strength because they're not known as a big hardware shop," Kutler said. "They manage systems, and there's going to be a lot of future growth in the information technology and biometric systems that help countries protect their borders and allow a free flow of trade. . . . The trend of being able to enter countries using just paper identification is a thing of the past."
The prime contractor for the United Kingdom's border control program will be Raytheon Systems Ltd., a British subsidiary.
It will work with a half-dozen British companies to compare lists of passengers entering the country by airplane, ship, or train with databases and watch lists of terror suspects. Transportation carriers would be required to supply the lists in advance by security proposals unveiled by the European Union last week. Raytheon will also manage a "count 'em in, count 'em out" program to monitor how long people traveling on visas can stay and when they leave.
Raytheon is subcontractor to technology services firm Accenture on the similar US-VISIT program in the United States.
Privacy advocates have been critical of border control tactics being employed on both sides of the Atlantic. Countries should consider whether collecting data on visitors is effective in combating terror and, if they choose to go forward with programs like e-Borders, they should take steps to minimize the risk of security breaches by private contractors, said Allison Knight, staff counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington.
"I haven't seen any evidence that collecting the advance information on passengers prevents terrorism," Knight said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Raytheon has worked to expand its business in homeland security, often by repurposing technology it supplies to the military for civilian use.
Among other things, the company has developed a surveillance system that protects the perimeters of US airports and a maritime defense system that tracks cargo ships approaching America. It also has been working on a technology that will help US border authorities peer into trucks, rail cars, and shipping containers to prevent the smuggling of nuclear materials. Such programs still represent a small portion of the company's overall revenue.
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.
