The global electronic warfare market will be worth $12.15 billion this year and grow to $15.59 billion by 2020, according to a new report.
The report, entitled Electronic Warfare Market Forecast Analysis 2014-2020, predicts the market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.5% in the next six years. The growth regions will be Latin America, Middle East and Asia-Pacific.
Brazil will be the leader in the Latin American region due to their commitment to electronic war systems’ research, development and implementation. In Asia and Middle-East the growth will be from border disputes and the response to these disputes, the report predicts.
The continuing exploitation of the electromagnetic spectrum will be a driving factor for the sector. Though airborne and naval platforms have dominated electronic warfare in the past decade, land-based electronic warfare systems are now gaining importance, the report says. There is also growing demand for smaller electronic warfare systems that can be integrated with smaller platforms like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and patrol vessels.
The market will see considerable growth due to stealth aircrafts and naval vessels. These platforms are hard to detect and track due to which the electronic warfare system will play a crucial role with respect to maintaining stealth, and at the same time, counter stealth.
The report points out that the electronic warfare market on the whole has numerous competitors who often engage in joint ventures to win major contracts. A typical example would be joint ventures between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to win contracts in the U.S.
Austerity leading to defence budget cuts are said to continue at least till 2016 in the two major western markets of the United States and the United Kingdom, something that may affect the primary market players which are from the United States and Europe.
