The next generation of military satellites

Posted Apr 30th 2007 11:09AM by Eric Buscemi
Filed under: Products and Services, Magazines

Inferential Focus, Inc. was the subject of Barron's interview this past weekend. This research driven company combs the world looking for new investment trends.

One emerging trend that could prove profitable for investors is the Department of Defense's need for a new generation of military satellites and communications networks in general. Technology exists, and could easily get into the hands of potential enemies, that can jam communications between U.S. spacecraft and ground stations by messing up the current DOD satellites that serve as central communications point for all these devices. A simple ground station based in any country could potentially mess up the communications of our military.

To solve this potential problem, the DOD has embarked on a $34 billion project to build a whole new global networking system similar to the Internet called GIG, or Global Information Grid. The DOD's goal is to make this network the most secure communications network ever to exist.

The companies that are going to benefit from this build-out are Globecomm Systems Inc (NASDAQ: GCOM), SAIC Inc (NYSE: SAI) and Radvision Ltd (NASDAQ: RVSN). My knowledge about these companies is severely lacking. Please send in comments if you know anything about this satellite build-out or these companies.

Tags: barron's, barrons, contract, gcom, globecomm, government, radvision, rvsn, sai, saic, satellite

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-19-2007 @ 1:43PM

EricInvestor said...

As mentioned in already Barron's, Global Information Grid (GIG) is a global satellite network build for the defense purposes, the DOD has committed 34 billion so far. A investor recently (7th MAY 2007) said about this ''It is rapily emerging as the next generation(200 BILLION over the next 10 years) architecture for critical information in a single, secure, network-centric environment for the US military(+ its allies).If your wondering abou the 200 billion it is mentioned in documents published by the Pentagon.

Radvision is an Israeli company and makes video conferencing software for civil and defense purposes.Jim Cramer all ready mentioned this company(stock) earlier in 2005 and 2006 (a ''buy'' when it was trading at $19 in 2006) he said that if you want to own a defense contracter rooted in the future this is the stock to have.On the 2nd of May it reported strong first quarter results.Its biggest (civil)customer is Cisco (35%).I can tell that with a marketcap of about 440 million dollar it has about 155 million in cash at hand(no debt). Roughly this is 7 dollar a share, that is a lot of cash to either further invest or buyback shares(as they are also doing).

Eric

disclaimer: long Radvision