Raytheon's Detours: Speed Queen Washers, the Lark Missile and RTX Penalties

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Raytheon, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1922 as the American Appliance Company by Vannevar Bush, Lawrence K. Marshall and Charles G. Smith, spent the Cold War living two lives. After building magnetrons and proximity fuses in World War II, it entered guided missiles in 1948, and in 1950 its Lark became the first missile to intercept and destroy a flying target using semi-active radar homing. The Sparrow and Hawk followed, and Raytheon built the Apollo guidance computer. Because defense budgets swung with geopolitics, it also bought Amana Refrigeration, washer and dryer maker Speed Queen and educational publisher D.C. Heath as a hedge, while ventures such as the RAYDAC computer and the PRT 2000 transit system failed.

The 1991 Gulf War, when Patriot interceptions of Scud missiles played on live television, pushed Raytheon to sell Amana, Speed Queen and its publishing arm and buy E-Systems, Chrysler's defense unit, Texas Instruments' defense business and the aerospace and defense business of Hughes Aircraft, which brought large early warning radars like Pave PAWS. It formed Forcepoint after buying Websense, merged with United Technologies in 2020 and became RTX in 2023, based in Arlington, Virginia. In August 2024 RTX agreed to a $200 million State Department fine over more than 750 export violations, and in October 2024 the Justice Department announced nearly $1 billion in penalties covering defective pricing from 2009 to 2020 and bribery of officials in Qatar.

• The name Raytheon combines old French and Greek and is translated in the episode as light from the gods.
• On September 11, 2001, Raytheon had an office on the 91st floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
• China sanctioned the company in 2020 and again in 2023 over arms sales to Taiwan.
• A plant acquired from E-Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida, drew 2008 lawsuits over trichloroethylene in groundwater.
• The EPA ordered groundwater treatment in Tucson, Arizona, for contamination dating to 1951 at a plant inherited in the Hughes deal.