OEM - Safety, safety, and Additional safety

ITT Corporation is a global diversified engineering and manufacturing company with business activities ranging from water treatment to defence contracting. In 2007, ITT was awarded a $1.86 billion contract by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of US to develop and deploy the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system, which is a key component of the FAA’s next generation air traffic management programme designed to enhance both safety and efficiency in civil aviation. Editor-in-Chief, SP Guide Publications, Jayant Baranwal spoke to Bruce K Scott, President of ITT Defense International and Vice President and Chief of International Development at ITT Defense and Information Solutions.

Jayant Baranwal (JB): What is your assessment of the potential of the Indian market for your company with regard to civil aviation?

Scott: On the commercial aviation side, we at ITT are upgrading the US air traffic management system. We have had regular visits from Indian authorities to our offices in Washington, Florida, Atlantic City on the new upgraded US system. We are moving in partnership with CII, VFA and ITT to upgrade the whole civil air traffic system. I am very excited about that. We are looking at the Indian market for night vision devices, radars for modern communication, and many other products. We officially opened an office in India six months ago which is headed by a regional vice president. He has been in India for three and a half years now. We have been working at establishing relationships and building trust and confidence with the civil aviation authorities where we can be a trusted partner.

JB: Do you foresee India as a production base or production hub for ITT products, and if so for which production programme, and in what timeframe?

Scott: The timeframe depends on our success in the Indian market. Whenever it is possible to manufacture in India, we will do that to the full extent of products the State Department allows. Unlike defence products, with regard to the air traffic management, I am pleased to say that in the Indian civil aviation sector, no component requires a licence from the State Department. I expect that there will be a very robust, thorough and complete participation in the FAA as well. I also see participation in the upgrade programme of air traffic management in electro-optical communication. We are committed to manufacturing in and servicing the Indian market. That is our commitment. It’s a huge market and we can produce in Bengaluru or Mumbai, New Delhi or Hyderabad.

JB: Regarding civil aviation, has ITT been active in India in the past?

Scott: Yes, but this was many years ago. ITT used to make all the radios for air traffic control towers around the world. We subsequently got out of the commercial radar and commercial radio business to focus on the defence sector. Now we are again involved in commercial aviation and about four years ago we worked very closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). We know what they want in the next generation air traffic management system. We thought we had the right solution and we were a part of the great competition. We are back in civil aviation and it is our architecture or software, our programmes, our protocol, the GPS satellite payload that we built, providing an incredibly safe environment for both general aviation and commercial aviation. In the US, aviation flights are innumerable and require a system to track them as well. Our NextGen ADS-B Air Traffic Management System does just this. In India, general aviation will grow a hundred-fold as your economy gets better, as the middle class gets larger. You will have more small aircraft that people would like to fly. That is the beauty of our system. So we are back in air traffic management in a very big way.

JB: What role can ITT play in the Indian civil aviation market? What solutions are likely to be proposed to India?

Scott: It is an Indian solution. We have worked with civil aviation authorities and met senior Civil Aviation Ministry officials. The Indian civil aviation authorities are impressed with the solutions we are providing to the FAA. In the US, we have four main air traffic management loads. There are 45 major airfields in India with air traffic control facilities. So if you look at the architecture, it is quite similar. Our system is very attractive and now it must be tailored to the Indian requirement. We have already done a complete analysis of what you need and where you need the towers.

JB: What difference and what edge do the ITT programmes offer compared to offers from competitors?

Scott: Our system is the best as it is doubly redundant. When we talk of the role of civil aviation, the fundamental attribute it must have is safety, safety, and additional safety. As airspace gets larger and you get more commercial aircraft, chances of air collisions will be higher. You can have military helicopters in front of commercial jets ready to take off. When ITT was announced the winner, the FAA minister said that they selected ITT as they offered to the FAA “a zero-risk solution”. So our solution has redundancy. In Europe, they have 1090 frequency and they have a transmitter that sends down their location using GPS payload. It is a very important facility. We have another frequency 787 that sends weather data and other aircraft data automatically. If either of this frequencies fails for whatever reason (and there is no history of them ever failing), the other one can automatically take up the role of the failed one. So it is doubly redundant. In Europe, when 1090 goes off, there is no backup frequency and I think that’s one of the reasons our proposal was acknowledged. We were by far the smallest company in the competition. However, we were selected because we were the most innovative and yet our solution was dedicated on providing FAA the safest and the most reliable system. Since years it has been working in all kinds of weather. We have been monitoring all aircraft over the Gulf, and it is the same over the Bay of Bengal and other places where we have heavy air traffic.

I want to stress on ITT’s solutions for air traffic management for India. We would be able to adapt our solutions to the Indian market. I have attended conferences on the India-US Business Council issues. In my view, the most important issue is getting viable commercial aircraft, so that you can move people and products quickly. I just think that’s the key area. You are working very hard on your infrastructure. We would merge the existing radar in air traffic management.