Featured exhibitor: L3-Harris

Who are L3-Harris?

One of the companies involved in SDSC-UK is L3-Harris. L3 and Harris completed their merger in 2019, making the combined entity one of the ten largest arms companies in the world. In 2020, the merged company had arms sales of $14.2 billion, out of total sales of $18.2b, making it the 10th largest arms company in the world, according to the SIPRI Arms Industry Database. Let's get to know them! 

Night terrors

Picture the scene: a family asleep in their home. It's dark - power's out. There have been explosions in the city but they've learnt to live with that daily danger. Suddenly there's a blinding flash and a bang. This isn't a bomb. There are men in the house, shouting, grabbing people. Rifle muzzles appear and vanish with sudden flashes and deafening cracks. Within minutes the soldiers are gone. They've left casualties behind on the ground and they've taken the males above 15 years of age away. 

This scene plays out in many countries where secret police and special forces conduct night raids to target dissidents, human rights defenders, or just people they who have been informed on.

Equipping night raids

Chances are, those armed men are equipped with night vision and communication tech from L3-Harris. Amongst many other areas of work, L3-Harris is active in electronic warfare and battlefield management, and manufactures night-vision equipment for soldiers  (company website).

Its GPNVG18 panoramic night vision system, or as “operators” call it, “Pano” was widely used by US special forces during the "war on terror", as were its communications and surveillance systems.

The company boasts:

“L3Harris' mission systems, operators, and field teams have supported (US Special Operations Forces) with more than 1.3 million combat hours over the past 10 years.” 

The company’s products have been crucial to the chronic fighting in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of this fighting on the ground has been done by “special operations forces”, and they simply could not have operated without the products from this company.

But that's not all!

L3-Harris produce a wide range of electronics and communications systems, including avionics, battlefield radios, optics, and electronic warfare systems. It produces equipment and technology for all of the land, sea, air, space, and cyber. In 2022, according to the company’s annual report, the company had military sales of $12.6bn, out of total sales of $17bn, making it around the 10th largest arms company in the world.

The company also tried to acquire Israeli NSO Group and with it the controversial Pegaus phone tracking software which various governments have used to target surveil dissidents, activists and journalists. 

Death from above

In the field of avionics, L3-Harris’ systems are key to several US combat aircraft including the F-22, F/A-18 and F-35 (company website). It also manufactures bomb-release mechanisms for aircraft including the famously expensive F-35 and the Reaper drone (company website), used extensively in targeted killing.

US drone and airstrikes alone have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 (Air Wars analysis).

Not a friend of workers

If you're consoling yourself with that the proliferation of death-dealing tech is at least good for workers, then you might not want to know that L3Harris is being sued by its own staff for mismanaging pension funds. (Pensions&investments).

Banner image: VoidWanderer, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons 

Air strike in Gaza: (AP Photo/Adel Hana)