Sanders Associates

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Sanders Associates was a defense contractor in Nashua, New Hampshire, USA that is now part of BAE Systems Electronics & Integrated Solutions, a subsidiary of BAE Systems. It concentrates on developing and manufacturing electronic systems, notably aircraft self-protection systems, and tactical surveillance and intelligence systems. Other business areas include microwave, missile and space electronics; infrared imaging; and automated mission planning systems, with both military and commercial applications.

[edit] History

The company was founded in Waltham, Massachusetts in July 1951, formed by eleven engineers and scientists from Raytheon. It was named for Royden C. Sanders, Jr., one of the original eleven associates. It moved its operations to Nashua in 1952, taking up a vacant mill building and restoring economic vitality to a city that had been devastated by the post-World War II departure of the textile industry to the lower-cost American South.

In 1986, Sanders Associates was bought out by Lockheed Corporation to become Sanders, A Lockheed Martin Company. Following the Lockheed/Martin Marietta merger in 1995 Sanders was merged into Lockheed Martin Aerospace Electronic Systems. In November 2000 BAE Systems completed its takeover of Lockheed Martin's AES business. BAE discontinued the Sanders name. The company became BAE Systems Information & Electronic Warfare Systems (IEWS). In 2005 this was merged into the newly created BAE Systems Electronics and Integrated Solutions.