Who fired what? Radiance Technologies creates battlefield device that can detect location of shot, type of weapon
Friday, September 23, 2005
In its first six years of life, Radiance Technologies has grown by leap and bounds. The Huntsville company boasts a work force of 265, $35 million annual sales in 2004 and more than $45 million in sales projected for 2005.
Last year, Inc. magazine named the government contractor one of the 500 fastest-growing privately owned companies.
How did this small Huntsville company move so far so fast?
It helps to know the business. Dr. George M. Clark, president of Radiance Technologies, along with several others who started the company, had the knowledge and experience needed for government contractor work.
Clark worked for 20 years "in a small company, and then in a larger company" that bought out the smaller one, he said in an interview earlier this week. Clark decided he preferred working for a smaller company, so he and several others formed Radiance Technologies back in 1999.
Clark, with a Ph.D from Georgia Institute of Technology in electrical engineering, has many years of experience working with sensors and in signal processing. So it was natural that he would decide to start up a systems engineering and technology development company.
Radiance Technologies is "99 percent government contracts," serving primarily the Army, but also intelligence agencies and NASA, Clark said.
The company has "an operational flavor as well as technical," said Clark - which means Radiance Technologies is heavily involved in intelligence-related work.
Clark would like to see Radiance Technologies continue to grow but keep a "small business mentality," which Clark defined as "more of a family atmosphere ... You know the people in the company and they work as a team together."
For a small company trying to maintain a family atmosphere, the firm has expanded quite a bit beyond Huntsville. Radiance Technologies offices are in 24 locations in order to be near customers, Clark said.
E. Scott Dublin, one of the founders of the company and its vice president and chief financial officer, noted the employee-owned company is incentive-based. The incentives are not meant to encourage competition among employees, but rather to encourage working as a team.
Being employee-owned attracts and keeps people in the company, Clark agreed. He noted that in six years, perhaps six or seven people have left the firm.
Another key to success is adaptation and expansion. Over time, Radiance Technologies has become increasingly involved in producing hardware and software. In fact the firm's five-year growth plan is for the business to be two-thirds hardware/software development, and one-third systems engineering, Clark said.
Part of the reason Radiance Technologies has been able to move into hardware/software development was the firm's success in a project called Weapon Watch, which supports American soldiers in Iraq.
Weapon Watch is a device that detects, classifies and locates weapons that are firing in real time. In other words, it shows where a weapon is being fired from, and provides information concerning the type of weapon used.
Weapon Watch came to Radiance as part of the Overhead Sensor program, Clark said. A contractor working on the project had run into some problems, and Radiance Technologies was asked to fix them.
Weapon Watch has been in development for several years, Clark said. About $30 million in research and development money went into producing the device. The opportunity led to plenty of hardware development work for Radiance Technologies employees.
About 45 people work on Weapon Watch, which consists of an aluminum box and a processor board. The unit is topped with an air-conditioning unit. A separate laptop or other computer is also needed.
When the project began, the device was big and heavy, but Radiance workers were able to make it smaller, lighter and more mobile. Instead of 400 pounds, Radiance Technologies has developed a 30-pound box (excluding the computer). Last year, several of the devices went into operation overseas, Clark said.
But Weapon Watch ran into difficulties because it was not sufficiently protected against the elements. In the Middle East, temperatures can be as high as 120 degrees in the shade, Clark noted.
Then there is the dust.
"In Iraq, you opened the box and you could write your name in the sand," he said.
Radiance Technologies made Weapon Watch "environmentally controlled" so that sand couldn't enter the aluminum box containing the hardware. Along with a tightly closed container, the company developed a thermal electric cooler. Then staff had to work to shrink the device down to a useable size.
The most recent version of Weapon Watch began operation in Iraq in January, Clark said. There are now four of the systems operating 24/7.
"They're doing very well," he said. The devices have been running without any problems. "No downtime for eight months."
Four Radiance Technologies employees have been sent to Iraq to make sure the units are glitch-free. Currently the firm is building 18 more units. While company officials declined to say what each unit costs, they noted the price per unit keeps dropping as more are built.
How well does Weapon Watch work?
"They may get a first shot off, but they'll never get a second one," said Christopher Bach, manager of systems engineering operations at Radiance Technologies.
Weapon Watch can be used in the air as well as on the ground, Clark noted. An airborne application is being tested on an unmanned aerial vehicle in Yuma, Ariz., he said.
The goal is to keep shrinking the device, perhaps down it down to the size of a cell phone.
Though creating a device that small could take a while, "the technology's there," said Bach, noting that people now hold more computing power in the palm of their hands than did researchers of years gone by in rooms containing mainframe computers.
Bach added that Weapon Watch has "Secret Service applications." The device could enable a shield to pop up in time to stop a bullet, for example.
Weapon Watch has been rewarding for employees of the company in more ways than just financial.
So many projects are "service-related," Clark said, "you never get to see them go into the field." But with Weapon Watch, "we place it in the hand of the soldier, and see it work. In that respect, it's extremely satisfying."
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