INTERVIEW - Raytheon homes in on Brazil's Amazon
Date: 17-Sep-99
Country: BRAZIL
Author: Noriko Yamaguchi
Raytheon plans to invest $287 million in the government's Amazon
Vigilance System (SIVAM), which will enable Brazil to collect crucial
data about deforestation in the Amazon, where an area twice the size of
France has already been cleared.
Backed by Raytheon's satellite system, SIVAM will allow the government
for the first time to monitor Brazil's enormous Amazon tropical forest -
about half the size of the United States.
Gregory Vuksich, the president of Raytheon's Brazilian operations, said
that the nonmilitary side of the project has been overshadowed by media
coverage which has mostly concentrated on SIVAM's security capabilities,
such as monitoring drug traffickers and Marxist Colombian guerrillas
along the country's northern borders.
"It is important to note the benefits of the environmental side of the
project," he told Reuters in an interview. "SIVAM is important in that
there will never be a challenge as big as this one of this kind
ecologically," he added.
Brazil announced the SIVAM at UN Conference on Environment and
Development, a summit held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Brazil's
Environment Ministry is also backing the project.
By amassing more data on unauthorised deforestation, the ministry says
it will be able to more effectively crack down on violators of
rainforest protection laws.
The ambitious project will deploy dozens of state-of-the-art
surveillance jets and hundreds of data transmission towers and weather
stations, which will be linked up by Raytheon's satellite communications
network. It is scheduled to come on line by July next year.
The SIVAM also aims to enhance Brazil's air traffic control and help
tackle drug smugglers and Colombian guerrillas who are seeking sanctuary
across the country's sparsely-populated northern border areas.
Raytheon, the No.3 aerospace and defence firm in the United States, will
provide radar and other electronic equipment, including some avionic
components for surveillance jets that will be manufactured by Brazil's
aircraft maker Embraer.
With its participation in SIVAM, Raytheon hopes in the future to win
potential clients in other Latin American countries with tropical
jungles, such as the governments of Colombia and Peru.
"Brazil and Latin America have always been areas of interest for
Raytheon, but the company has not been a major player here because big
defence markets have been in the Middle East, Far East and Europe,"
Vuksich said.
"But now the company sees it has to expand in the non-defence markets,
and Brazil and Latin America have immense potentials in these areas."
Raytheon first made its big move into the non-defence consumer market
after World War II when the company adapted radar systems to invent the
microwave oven.
More recently in Latin America, the company developed a system to detect
fake passports for Argentina and Mexico and a method to manufacture
official driver licenses for Guatemala.
In Brazil, the company set up its foothold as early as 1929 when it
constructed an electric energy plant in Brazil's southernmost state of
Rio Grande do Sul. It built two more plants in neighbouring Parana state
in 1931.
