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ACSS Demos New Products, New Chief
Along with its aircraft-protecting hardware and software, Aviation Communication & Surveillance Systems (ACSS) comes to this year's show with a new boss, Kris Ganase. Formerly the ACSS evp and CEO, Ganase stepped up to the presidential position in June after previous president Joe Hoffman was promoted to a group position within parent company L-3 Communications. ACSS is a joint venture between L-3 (70%) and Thales Company (30%).
Though he plans to sustain Hoffman's efforts to diversify the surveillance and communication equipment company, Ganase's primary push at the moment is to complete STCs and installations of the company's trademark T2CAS—a combined traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) and terrain awareness warning system (TAWS)—in time for fast approaching global deadlines. European aircraft must be equipped with TCAS and Mode S by next March, and TAWS by 2007.
Not surprisingly, the retrofit business is a hot item for ACSS, with sales of 1,000 T2CAS units on the books and a host of STCs in the works for the remainder of the year. The deadlines have also been uplifting for ACSS's heritage TCAS 2000 as well as for its line of Mode S transponders, both of which have most of their STCs already completed.
In addition to the retrofit blitz, T2CAS is also standard fare on all new Airbus production aircraft, with the exception of the A380, and all Embraer regional jets. Other customers include Gulf Air, Federal Express, Mesaba, Northwest Airlines, QATAR and Royal Brunei.
T2CAS represents the first evolution of ACSS's launch product, TCAS 2000, originally produced by Honeywell but sold to L-3 as part of an agreement between Honeywell, the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission in advance of the 2000 merger of Honeywell and AlliedSignal. Honeywell retained AlliedSignal's TCAS business, which included about 7,500 units flying in various commercial, business and military aircraft.
Since 2000, Ganase says ACSS has introduced one new product a year, the first being T2CAS. "Our goal is to grow this business," he says. "You can't survive by having just one product." In 2001, ACSS added TAWS functionality to the heritage TCAS 2000 system to come up with T2CAS. In 2002, it combined automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) to T2CAS for a system designed to help military aircraft rendezvous and formate with tankers. The Military Airborne Surveillance System (MASS) is slated to be certified by the FAA this year and will fly in Boeing 767 tankers if and when that program comes to fruition.
Launched last year and certified last month was the company's datalink communications offering called Dlink+, a low-cost digital communications system with VDL Mode 2 digital radios. Launch customer Air Wisconsin will use Dlink+ for ACARS in its fleet of BAe 146s and Bombardier CRJs.
This year's product, TAWS+ and TAWS+performance, both on display at the L-3/ACSS booth (Hall 4, Stand A12), is a TAWS unit in a standalone 2 MCU box, largely aimed at the business aircraft market. TAWS+ provides pilots with terrain alerts based on a standard climb gradient and TAWS+performance adds real-time aircraft performance characteristics to be able to determine if an aircraft can climb over terrain or must change course.
After the mandate mania settles next year, ACSS will focus on completing the next generation of T2CAS, called the Protector+ series. Taking a hint from the personal computer industry, ACSS plans to build a common hardware platform that can be customized to any user's needs, primarily with software. As such, Protector+ purchasers will be able to select among the various ACSS offerings including TCAS, TAWS, datalink, Mode S, airport surface management, weather radar and other options.
Ganase says the company will likely keep a 50% forward-fit and 50% retrofit mix in terms of its sales with growth paths, and will stay on the leading-edge by a commitment to new technology. "When you have a small company with a very limited product line, you have to invest in research and development to grow," says Ganase. How much does the company put back into R&D? Ganase wouldn't give the exact number, but said it's "much more" than 10%. "We are getting payback," he says. "T2CAS is selling like hotcakes."
—John Croft
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