L-3 TCAS 2000 Is Offered to the Global Market

When it comes to collision avoidance systems, L-3 Communications plans to catch the ball and run with it.

The U.S. conglomerate bought the TCAS 2000 traffic collision avoidance system from Honeywell last April after the regulatory authorities decreed the Honeywell-AlliedSignal merger shed one of its two similar products. Now, with Thomson-CSF's Sextant as a 30% partner, L-3 is offering TCAS 2000 to the global market.

The business is already worth about $100 million a year in sales, and L-3 chairman and CEO Frank Lanza expects it to take off.

"It is growing very rapidly now the military are beginning to adopt it, and could become one of our largest single product areas," he told Show News.

L-3 already has development plans for the product, aiming to link it with flight management systems and situational awareness. "Next generations will be compatible with ground surveillance systems as well as GPS, and could be linked into communications as well," he said.

Lanza is also planning to take it downmarket into general aviation. "People there, with $2 million to $5 million airplanes, can't afford to spend $100,000 on a TCAS. So we will develop an entry-level system that doesn't have all the airline frills but greatly improves the level of safety. It is an evolving market."