July 1, 2024 by
BATTLESPACE Editor Julian Nettlefold connects with Eric Kaled – President of SPX Communication Technologies and Genfare at SPX Technologies – as candidate for BATTLESPACE Businessman of the Year 2024.
Tell us a bit about SPX Technologies and your role within the business.
SPX Technologies is a global specialist in building innovative next-generation technologies that ensure a smarter, more secure future for all. Since joining SPX in 2019, my role has evolved, and I am now President of SPX Communication Technologies – formed by TCI and Enterprise Control Systems – and the transportation company Genfare, as part of SPX Technologies detection and measurement platform.
With over 10,000 employees globally, I lead a team committed to making easy-to-use high-tech solutions that solve some of the world’s biggest challenges today. I’m proud to be on the company’s executive council for diversity and inclusion and a facilitator of the sponsorship of our executive leadership programme. I’m also part of our executive software council for engineering development, focused on innovation, and an executive leadership member for enterprise-wide activities and influence.
How did your career start?
Since my early college days in engineering, I’ve been excited about innovation and solving problems creatively, which is what I believe technology is all about. Regardless of the industry, I’ve always been a firm believer that you can innovate and solve problems, whether they’re purely technological or involve applications such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), or the Internet of Things (IoT).
After graduating, my work experience has been quite diverse. I’ve been fortunate to work in over 20 countries, within many disciplines and at different levels. Before joining SPX Technologies, I held executive leadership roles across CraneCo, including payment, merchandising and process flow technologies for the chemical, refining, and power industries. I spent over two decades at the intersection of growth, optimisation, and business acquisition, stewarding businesses and cultivating leaders in publicly traded B2B companies spanning fintech, retail, mobile, gaming, transportation, and industrial manufacturing. These experiences have ultimately allowed me to grow to where I am today at SPX Technologies.
How is SPX Technologies supporting modern battlespace operations?
Defence teams and governments rely heavily on real-time spectrum monitoring and data transmission that help protect entire communities within and outside national borders. At SPX Communication Technologies we specialise in Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum technologies which enables them to do this faster and more accurately than ever.
Our primary goal is to use our RF technology to deliver innovation and progress. It’s been three years since TCI and Enterprise Control Systems (ECS) joined forces and combined decades of expertise in RF countermeasures, encrypted data links systems, and leading RF detection and location systems, creating the global infrastructure we know today as SPX Communication Technologies. Since then, we’ve made some significant changes in our company structure, and rapidly expanded business operations, culminating in multi-million contract wins for the first jointly developed BLACKTALON counter unmanned aerial systems (counter-UAS) solution. BLACKTALON is proven in active conflict and is currently deployed across the globe.
Can you go into a little more detail on BLACKTALON?
BLACKTALON is a scalable solution that detects, tracks, and defeats UAS engaged in hostile activity or surveillance by nuisance drone enthusiasts, insurgents, state actors, or hostile militaries. It provides comprehensive situational awareness and mitigation as a standalone or networked capability, a multi-layered counter-UAS, or a component of a Ground-Based Air Defence (GBAD) system.
BLACKTALON’s cutting-edge technology provides defence and security teams with the necessary capabilities to maintain airspace dominance and protect critical assets from the evolving UAS landscape. What’s more, we’re currently working on taking this even further with advanced customisation features which we look forward to sharing in the coming months.
How are you helping defence teams stay one step ahead?
First and foremost, we listen to our customers. Their perspective is essential to informing our business strategy, particularly when it comes to product development and innovation. The SPX Communication Technologies team regularly meets with customers from across the world to learn about their challenges, how their requirements are evolving, and to ensure we understand their problems from their point of view.
We also review and assess global challenges and trends, which allows us to be ready to adapt and evolve as the world and our end-users require. Additionally, in order to best support customers, we’ve built a strong network of global in-country partners. Having these local representatives across nations allows us to keep up with local issues, identify specific needs and deliver the right products even faster – even in the places that are hard to reach due to geopolitical and social tensions.
The most recent example of this is SPX Communication Technologies’ extended partnership with Depicon, a Belgium-based business development company that has been granted exclusive rights to offer our Tactical Data Link portfolio to aerospace and defence organisations in the Benelux region.
Ultimately, in order to address challenges with the appropriate solution we’re combining our proven technology with local expertise to provide the appropriate solution.
To read the full press release in the Battlespace publication, please click here: BATTLESPACE interview with Eric Kaled, President at SPX Communication Technologies and Genfare (battle-updates.com)