I wonder if this would be approved since i'd give the new holdings a monopoly on i2 in the US anyway.

Wonder what this will do to the NV game?

Raise prices?  One less competitors.

Gov't will not care about a monopoly on such items.

I guess I'd better polish up my resume.   I have some experience with certain L3 flight simulators (system and detailed troubleshooting and system alignment and calibration)  and maybe I could leverage that into a Harris job.

Monopoly, I can see a huge price increase on tubes.  They would be the only manufacture in the US of GEN 3 tubes.

Guess those Photonis tubes are looking better and better if that happens ;)

Honestly, I would also expect cost increase if it happens even if only a few hundred dollars. Seems to be the norm buy out and then price increase to pay for merger cost.

I have a couple extra L3 WP filmless tubes 18UM and a WP filmless commercial spec tube I was thinking of parting with. Maybe  now I will just hold on to them.

that's an interesting merge. Wonder who will be the top, and what will get spun off?

At first I was going to say "L3 will be on top" but you made me think...

I think if L3 is on top, the relationship will be a good one and the US will take the lead again in around 2025.

I think if Harris is on top, the relationship will be interesting, and the US will buy all it's quality Gen3 night vision from China in 2027.

Except we're talking about free market here. Photonis tubes are only marginally cheaper than L3 or Harris tubes right now, and if the price on Photonis's competition increases, they will follow suit.

+1, my L3 investment has been good.

What?

Also Harris is clearly on top. Read the release about HQ locations, etc.

So about 4 years ago, Excelis was producing the world's best tubes, and L3 was struggling to keep up. ITT / Excelis had been smashing L3 since 2002...

The Harris bought and took over Excelis' tube manufacture. They got rid of all their top scientists, and never realized just how important to the end product.They thought that all they needed was the recipe and the rest would follow.

After all, they simply saw tubes as a way to sell more radios. ( There is something to that where I agree with Harris, but not just yet. ) and this resulted in the destruction of Harris' tube IP. They never realized how much was in the heads of their employees that wasn't possible to condense down into an exchangeable format.

So now the US only has one top manufacturer....

If Harris take over L3, why would you think this time will be any different. Once again, they just want to sell radios and tubes are just another way to sell radios to them. Night vision is just a condiment to the main dish for Harris. All those guys who "Cracked the code" at L3 and started producing tubes over 40:1 S/N? Do you really think Harris will keep them?

Even if they do, their days as researchers are numbered.

Maybe Harris learned their lesson, but if the same people are running it, then I doubt this to be the case. So China is about 20 years behind the US where Gen3 is concerned. They are catching up at the rate of maybe four to five years each year, and are clearly investing heavily. But keep in mind that even in the past 20 years, the US has not gotten all that far when it comes to tube technology.

So yeah, it's a tongue-in-cheek comment, but it's entirely possible. :(

David.

Those are some pretty tall claims. Got any proof for that?

Harris isn't the kind of place that fires top scientists or engineers.

Proof? Like do you mean do I secretly work for Harris and I stole all of their HR records of something? No. I don't.

Or do you mean information collected via this forum over a decade, from speaking to others on this forum, and from my personal conversations with senior Harris employees who confirmed all of this and bemoaned the fate of ITT's technology?

The second doesn't really count as proof... it's all anecdotal.

And the issue with the loss of talent isn't that much of a secret. Harris didn't get a big contract they expected to get, and downsized. That was just before they ran into problems with fixed pattern noise on their production line a year or so ago and there's some opinion on the matter than the two incidents were related.

But generally, internationally, only L3 is still considered a top manufacturer. That's a LONG way to fall. ITT was absolutely dominant over L3 prior to this decade, and even through the start of it. They lost much of that overnight, and I don't think the fine for deliberately giving US technology to the Chinese so they could increase their profits even accounts for the failure. ( That much, there IS proof of... It's well documented by the DoJ ) because even after that, ITT ( or Excelis ) continued to dominate the NV industry.

But the focus just does not appear to be there since Harris took over. I would hate to see the same happen to L3. Point in case, ITT/Excelis was developing some awesome tech when I spoke to them in 2013. That all evaporated by the time I spoke to Harris again in 2016. All the research had been cancelled, and they were primarily interested in showing me how their NV and their radios combined, which is cool, sure, but it was only a part of what Excelis was doing at the time.

I'm not actually anti-L3 or Harris. I've said before, Harris is the *only* manufacturer I know of with their eyes on the end-goal of what will emerge, IMO, as the biggest role for night vision technology in the future that I can see, and who has the technology to deliver it. But Harris really did seem to run ITT's legacy into the ground and I'm not sure if they will ever deliver on any of it.

Meanwhile, I'm just talking Gen3.

At the same time, Photonis have leapt completely ahead in terms of spectral capabilities in their latest technology, not to mention they're producing tubes of >30 S/N quite commonly now. China and Russia are both making high end Gen3, and Russia's stuff is close to earlier US tech, while China is catching up quickly.

This is not a good time for the US to look away from constantly pushing ahead with new developments in Gen3.

Had Harris continued to dominate the upper performance area of night vision, I would have said that their position would be unassailable with L3. L3 has really forged ahead over the past decade and that in and of itself has nothing to do with ITT or Harris. But I am questioning whether Harris will allow L3 to continue to invest as much in R&D as it needs to.

This is all, of course, just my opinion. And maybe a little hyperbole. But if you have information otherwise, please share it. Discussion is a useful tool - :)

David.

Hi Sam,

Sorry, I wasn't quite intending for it to appear that L3 wasn't always a "best manufacturer" - Just that ITT was absolutely dominant in the industry. L3 played second fiddle for many years, and even acknowledged as much from time to time. Their research into filmless was always exceptional however, even back as far as 2002. I don't think anyone ever saw L3 as other than one of the top 3 players in the world though.

I could be wrong, but I don't think L3 ever made any thin film. I know they supplied thin film many times for contracts, and these even made it to the commercial market, but in several instances, the source of the technology itself was traced back to ITT and the choice of PSU was telling.  L3 made some awesome filmed tubes though.

One thing I've always struggled to find was any decent photocathode QE charts for L3. I still do. They just don't seem to publish them, and IIRC, the ones that were alluded to suggested L3 had a very narrow spectral response compared to ITT.

David.

Harris and L-3 are both 15-18 Billion dollar companies.

The night vision portion is small, a few hundred million combined.

Harris is mostly in secure-com radios, nav-sats, and civil aviation
L-3 is mostly in military avionics, sensor sats, simulators.  They have also invested heavily into Underwater Autonomous vehicle companies int he last 3-4 years.

There is a little overlap in the satellite business, but almost all the overlap between the two companies is in I-squared.

The merger won't go through until probably April or May, and still needs the approval of all the government alphabet agencies.  The Army won't like having one supplier.  The rest of DOD doesn't care.  It's possible that DOD might require one or the other tube houses to be spun off.

When Harris bought Exelis they wanted the radio business.  Their heart and soul isn't NVGs. I don't actually know if they have spent any money on the tube house since then, but the only contracts they have won are low value FMS orders.

The folks in Tempe are nervous.  I presume the folks in Roanoke are as well.