Sanderson sows seeds for success
EOS Defence Systems’ Grant Sanderson is heading a hi-tech company specialising in remote weapon stations, in a role almost predestined by his background.
As chief executive of Electro Optic Systems (EOS) Defence Systems, Grant Sanderson is heading a hi-tech company specialising in remote weapon stations (RWS), and in a role almost predestined by his background.
The son of former Army Chief Lieutenant-General John Sanderson, the 55-year-old CEO spent 25 years in the army, primarily in infantry battalions and Special Forces but also in Army Headquarters and Force Development, leaving in 2007 as a Lieutenant-Colonel.
Four years with Thales working on development of the Bushmaster and Hawkei protected vehicles was followed by four years with Elbit Systems focusing on battle management systems, and two years as a private consultant, with Canberra-based EOS as one of his clients.
There he helped chart the international expansion of the company’s defence business, in particular into North America and South-East Asia, and was subsequently asked by EOS Group chief executive Ben Greene to head the global Defence Systems business from January 2018 and execute the strategies he had helped develop.
“We’ve doubled to 383 the number of people working for us, tripled our footprint around the world in terms of where we’re located, and obviously the business is going well,” Sanderson says.
“Our main production facility is in Canberra but 83 staff are overseas and we have another production facility in Huntsville, Alabama; an office in Tucson, Arizona; an office in Singapore; and an office in Abu Dhabi with a large installation and support facility.”
The overall EOS group, including its smaller Space and Communications divisions, anticipates 2020 revenue of more than $200m and a stronger performance in 2021. Most of this is defence-related, as is 90 per cent of an order backlog of $570m, Sanderson says.
“Each of the three divisions is built around our laser technology and very precise levels of control and stabilisation,” he explains.
“If you can find space junk whizzing around the world at more than 10,000km/h, then you can get a bullet through a car window from 2km and you can keep an optical communications point running.
“There’s an integrated strategy to maximise the value attached to each of the three areas in ways that others can’t, whether it’s in communications delivering higher levels of information bandwidth, in space finding things that other people can’t, or in defence delivering higher levels of awareness and decision engagement.”
Defence Systems currently has contracts with nine countries — some production, some ongoing through-life support and development activities. Exports account for 95 per cent of revenue.
Most orders are for the R-400 remote weapon station (RWS), a product the company first developed for a major US army contract but has subsequently refined and taken to a new level of capability in a range of configurations.
These include the unique ability to simultaneously mount a lightweight 30mm cannon, a 7.62mm machine gun and antitank guided missiles, delivering a weight of firepower which had never previously been achieved with a compact, lightweight RWS.
Despite the focus on exports, more than 200 RWS have been delivered to the army for use on Bushmasters and, in July, Defence Systems received a welcome $94m contract to supply 251 R-400 systems for ADF Hawkeis and additional Bushmasters.
These are weapons-adaptive models and can be configured for anything from a 5.56mm to .50 calibre machine guns, a 40mm automatic grenade launcher, or even a lightweight 30mm cannon.
“We entered 2020 well placed; we raised $134m in capital in April and had three years’ worth of production on the order book,” Sanderson notes.
“But without that July order we would have had to slow production and, in some cases, halt it because of COVID overseas delivery and installation issues, in which many of our 146 Australian suppliers would have been very challenged.
“Bridging that gap from October through to July/August next year means the supply chain will remain fully engaged and the more than 1000 workers in the chain will remain fully active.”
Counter-drone capability is currently a hot subject, and Sanderson says that ultimately, every RWS made by EOS will be capable with the right cuing of detecting a drone, tracking and, depending on the RWS’s configuration, killing it from several hundred metres out to well beyond 1.5km.
But the company has also been working on a 26kW laser-directed energy counter drone capability, which it will field in containerised form in November. Developed and manufactured in-house, the high energy laser (HEL) is capable of scaling up to about 50kW.
“All of our laser technologies are fibre-based, high-power and high-beam continuous wave lasers coupled to EOS adaptive optics, we are able to build these solutions to almost any scale relevant to the task being addressed,” he says.
“The mechanical and fire control architectures for our direct fire RWS and our directed energy systems are built on the same technologies and subsystems. The directed energy will kill a drone well beyond 1.5km although range depends on the atmosphere and the level of elevation — the colder and higher the better.”
EOS is currently involved in contract negotiations with what he describes as the world’s largest counterdrone program. But an outcome is unlikely until next year as the program has not been identified and the capabilities under discussion haven’t been disclosed.
A more visible development driver is the T-2000 turret developed with Elbit Systems for the Redback AS21 proposed by South Korea’s Hanwha Defense for Australia’s Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) requirement.
Described by Sanderson as arguably the world’s best manned turret, core technologies such as battle management systems, see-through armour, active protection systems, and antitank guided missiles are already integrated in the turret instead having to be installed and integrated retrospectively.
Sanderson is confident of export sales for the T-2000 before the Australian IFV requirement is decided. In the meantime, away from the office and commercial concerns he has a large garden and orchard to tend and enjoy.