Magnavox · the defense-electronics house

1944 — 1997 and its successors

Radios, sonobuoys, and the squad radio: Magnavox's commercial record — the move to Fort Wayne in 1930–1932, the loudspeaker and console business, the Odyssey — belongs to the Business record. Its defense line is this chapter's. The Government and Industrial side of the Fort Wayne works was in war production by the early 1940s: a federal court filing in the company's successor chain records Magnavox Government and Industrial operating a New Haven Avenue plant from 1944 to 1946 assembling radio and signal-detection equipment, and by 1952 the Government & Industrial Division had taken over the majority of the Fort Wayne workforce, occupying about 318,000 square feet of manufacturing and engineering floor space. From the 1950s the Fort Wayne division built sonobuoy technology — the air-dropped acoustic sensors of anti-submarine warfare — and produced them eventually by the millions. Its documented product line across the Cold War decades, as the company's successor record lists it, centered on three areas by the late 1980s: C-Cubed (command, control and communication), electronic warfare, and sonobuoys. The named systems are the AN/ARC-164 UHF airborne radio — the standard Air Force and NATO UHF radio, first fielded in 1975, of which Raytheon later stated more than 60,000 had been delivered; the AN/SSQ-53 and AN/SSQ-62 series sonobuoys; the AN/ALQ-128 electronic-warfare equipment; the AN/PRC-68 family, the first synthesized U.S. military handheld squad radio, won in competition and put into production at Fort Wayne in 1976; and the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS).

The corporate chain, as the filings and company histories state it: Magnavox was acquired by North American Philips in 1974; the defense group continued as Magnavox Government and Industrial Electronics Company, renamed Magnavox Electronic Systems Company in 1991, under Philips and then the Carlyle Group; Hughes Electronics bought the defense operations in September 1995 and renamed them Hughes Defense Communications; in December 1997 Raytheon acquired the Hughes electronics business, and the Fort Wayne remnant continued under Raytheon's Network Centric Systems at 1010 Production Road — see the Raytheon entry below. The sonobuoy operation was spun off by Raytheon as Under Sea Systems Inc. in Columbia City, Whitley County, and sold to Ultra Electronics in 1998; it builds acoustic sensing and communication devices there still, one county west — the single step of this lineage that leaves the city, noted here because the line itself is Fort Wayne's. A company history of the division's 1951–1991 years, Magnavox Government and Industrial Electronics Company: A Legacy of Pride and Excellence (2017), records annual sales above 650 million dollars and employment above 7,000 at the division's height — the division's own figures, carried as such.

Sources:

1. ACGSI, "Magnavox, Fort Wayne, Indiana" — the 1930/1932 move, the Department of Defense work from the 1940s, the 1952 division majority and 318,000 square feet, sonobuoy production from the 1950s, and the 2017 division history with its sales and employment figures.
2. U.S. District Court (N.D. Ind.), case 1:23-cv-00164 complaint (2023) — the 1944–1946 New Haven operation and the successor chain: Philips (1974), Magnavox Electronic Systems Company (1991), Hughes purchase (1995), Raytheon merger (1997).
3. "Magnavox" defense-electronics summary — the C-Cubed / electronic warfare / sonobuoy structure and the product list (AN/ARC-164, AN/SSQ-53, AN/SSQ-62, AN/ALQ-128, AFATDS); Forecast International, ARC-164(V) report (2008) — first fielded 1975, more than 60,000 delivered, the Fort Wayne Production Road address for the successor operation.
4. A. D. Tasker, "The AN/PRC-68 Legacy" — the 1976 Magnavox Fort Wayne squad-radio win and production.