Rex Systems Inc. News 3/28/2003

Jon Myre said he was struck by the importance of the equipment he manufactures when he heard a British plane had been shot down in Iraq.

The coalition plane’s IFF equipment -- identifying a plane as friend or foe -- might not have worked, he said.

Myre is president of Rex Systems in Lake Hallie, where workers make similar IFF equipment for U.S. aircraft.

“It sends the message back home that we make equipment that helps to fight the war,” Myre said. “The equipment we make has life-or-death consequences.”

Rex Systems is among a handful of Chippewa Valley companies that have received contracts from the Department of Defense in recent years. Rex obtained about $3.3 million in the past two years for its equipment.

Earlier this week, President Bush recommended that Congress approve $74.7 billion to aid in the war effort. Myre said it is possible a chunk of that money might come back to the Chippewa Valley, whether to his company or other defense contractors.

“There are some things out there,” Myre said. “It’s all speculative at this point. We don’t make ‘consumables’; you don’t blow it up and it’s gone.”

Steve Conway, spokesman for Cray, said he couldn’t comment on possible new dollars headed toward his company as a result of the war in Iraq.

“Cray systems are heavily used by the Department of Defense,” Conway said. “(If new dollars were appropriated), it would be used for developing and testing better weapon systems.”

Conway said a Cray computer model that studies ways to disperse biological agents is being used by the Defense Department.

U.S. Rep. David Obey, D-Wausau, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, has fought for defense dollars to come to the Chippewa Valley, spokesman Tom Powell-Bullock said.

But Powell-Bullock said he isn’t sure how much of Bush’s additional defense request would make its way back to Wisconsin.

“A lot of this money is paying for new missiles or fuel or food,” Powell-Bullock said. “It doesn’t necessarily pay for next-generation computers that are created in the Chippewa Valley.”

John Burwell, senior director of government industries at SGI, said the company has created computer programs that generate three-dimensional graphics of Iraq’s terrain for the military.

“A battlefield commander can process through this information and make better decisions,” Burwell said.

SGI also manufactures equipment for flight simulator programs, which help pilots rehearse their missions, Burwell said.

It is unclear if any of Bush’s budget request will come to SGI, but it is a possibility, he said.

“Since we have been a player in defense for so long, we expect we will continue to be a participant to new defense systems in the future,” Burwell said.