With over 50 years experience in the Kingdom, the company has built a bank of experience based on the unique experience of the Kingdom’s rapid development from crude oil exporter to complex industrial society with a matching infrastructure to develop, maintain and defend.

An indicator that the government has long term planning in mind, thought James R. Brungess, senior executive of Raytheon International Inc., was the recent announcement of a phased $300 billion investment in a nuclear power program that will provide an alternative energy source predicated on the finite nature of oil resources and its price volatility.

The Kingdom is the largest per-capita consumer of petroleum products - not simply because of high vehicle use and air conditioning, but because oil is currently the only fuel used to run a desalination plant.

“The growth of that by the year 2030 or so will mean that 80 percent of the oil that Saudi Arabia produces will be committed to that,” said Brungess.

Current figures support that view and indicate that consumption looks set to double by 2020 anyway.

Brungess, Raytheon’s 15-year man-on-the-round in Saudi Arabia, agreed that there was a sea change noticeable in the development of Saudi Arabia.

“The transition between where Saudi Arabia is now and where it is going is critical for both for itself and for everyone who deals with it,” said Brungess.

“Our core business remains defense but we are responding to the needs of the Saudi economy which has changed dramatically in the last three to five years.”

The development of long-term thinking in the Kingdom is not new. Saudi Arabia has had 135,000 students in English-speaking universities over the last five years and now they are coming back at about 35,000 a year with a wide variety of technical training.

“The economy needs them desperately and now they are back,” Brungess said.

Brungess thought that over the last two years there had been a growth in the entrepreneurial spirit, the re-growth of an industrial base filling in the gaps where the economy has yet to accomplish.

Investment was, he added, not so much in terms of money but in spirit, of learning and trying to create technologists to get the industry itself to be self-sustaining.

“It’s about employing and training Saudis so that the investment sustains beyond the capital.”

Evidence of that was, he said, the very large social consciousness program that had major applicability in Saudi Arabia, “which means working with higher institutions, education, research and development and some technology transfer.”

He gave examples of involvement with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and King Saud University (KSU) in particular and said: “We are also looking at working with some of the private universities.”

Raytheon spoke to leaders in Saudi education and concluded that they were aware of where they are and where they needed to go.

Brungess saw KSU’s hiring of 18 Nobel laureates in the physics and chemistry areas as a positive shift toward training people “to become employable entrepreneurs and meet the needs of the culture.”

“The unemployment rates are higher than they ought to be and they know it. One day the oil will run out and they have to diversify into an economy that will provide a future,” thought Brungess.

“It’s investment not just as, “throw money at it” but as team partnerships that make both sides money.”

As it stands, Raytheon is the biggest training company in the world and sees training as an integral part of its business operation.

Although frequently seen as just a missile company — the iconic Patriot missile perhaps the best known — radar and surveillance systems make up a very large part of the business. Brungess saw that as a growth area for the company and an opportunity to develop Saudi talent in the field of electronics and cyber defense.

“When you have huge extended infrastructure growth and especially with the growth of asymmetric warfare, you have to protect them or at least provide surveillance so quick responders can be called up. That’s a growth area.”

The huge investment in the six economic cities and nuclear programs together with desalination and power has to be protected not just physically, but also by cyber surveillance and command and control, which are growing areas.

“There is a standing requirement for that and as the market looks at what it needs to protect, the answer is more and more,” he said.

“The cyber world is coming into its own and Saudi Arabia is right in the middle of it.”

Apart from the challenges of building and protecting the infrastructure, cross-border threat is ever present. Brungess said that the Kingdom was “very much aware” of Iran and Yemen.

“Their concerns as regards Yemen range from cross border insurgence by smugglers to a rogue state and they are trying to figure out what that is going to do to their security needs in terms of training, surveillance, restraint,” he said.

“They have to prepare for that; it has major implications to their security. They have to be able to deal with it on land, sea, in the air and the cyber world.” Meeting those needs is what we do; weapons, surveillance and integration.”