For suppliers of defense equipment, selling a platform or a subsystem is just the beginning. The importance of what would be called “after-sales service” in the commercial market has increased as the global economic climate has worsened, but in certain sectors it has never really been about just selling a product. This is particularly true of electronic warfare (EW) systems.

With two new electronic warfare (EW) systems recently brought to market — Sage, which detects radio frequency emitters at distance, and Seer, a radar-warning receiver — Selex ES’s Electronic Warfare Operational Support (EWOS) center is becoming ever more important to the company’s EW business.

Integrating interoperable open architectures (IOA) in new and existing platforms offers benefits across defense procurement. The time between identifying an operational requirement and getting it fielded would be minimized; subsystems could be integrated without bulking up platforms; and procurement costs could be cut, if only obsolete or superfluous components are removed and replace.