Force Protection designs, manufactures, tests, delivers and supports blast- and mine-protected vehicles.

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Force Protection Inc. doesn’t try to keep up with the large military contracting companies in terms of production. But those big players can’t match the innovation, knowledge and experience Force Protection has in its executive team.

“There are others out there that are good mass producers,” says Damon Walsh, executive vice president of customer operations. “We’re a small player in terms of the defense industry, but we see ourselves capable of coming up with new solutions so we can partner with those big companies that can produce more and more efficiently.”

Force Protection was formed in 1997 and says it has become the nation’s leading center for blast technology and counter-improvised explosive device (IED) research as it designs, manufactures, tests, delivers and supports blast- and mine-protected vehicles throughout the world. The company’s growth since its inception forced Force Protection to expand its production facility to 550,000 square feet of administrative, manufacturing, research and development, test, and integration space, as well as increase of its work force to 1,500 employees.

Force Protection’s experience lies with CEO, President and Chairman Michael Moody – who has 40 years in the industry; Dr. Vernon Joynt, who previously worked for the South African government for 30 years; and Walsh. Walsh took time to speak with U.S. Business Review about the company’s expansion into other markets, trends in the industry and keeping up with the demand for Force Protection’s products.

U.S Business Review: What are some new developments in the company?
Damon Walsh: We’re looking at a broad range of survivability solutions in external packages, such as technology that redirects blast energy using different materials. It could be applied to living facilities, commercial vehicles, or it could be to individual uniforms or body protection.

Right now we’re strictly working on vehicles and applications to the vehicles. But we would consider going anywhere that there’s a demand for our solutions.

USBR: What trends are occurring with the industry at the moment?
DW: More companies moving into the industry as the defense departments around the world react to the prevalence of IEDs and mine and ballistic attacks. We recognize it is challenging to compete from a manufacturing standpoint, however we are focusing on the technology side.

We are, however, because of our size, more agile. And we have a well-developed capability for looking at what the future is going to need.

On the technical side, customers are going more toward lighter-weight, agile vehicle solutions. They afford the same kind of protection, but the lighter vehicles afford greater mobility.

We’re currently in testing for the Cheetah, which is a lighter-weight version of our Cougar but affords Humvee-style mobility with Cougar-style survivability. The cougar’s gross vehicle weight is about 36,000 pounds for the 4x4 variant (54,000 pounds for the 6x6 version), and the Cheetah gross weight is around 23,000.

USBR: Can you think of a recent challenge Force Protection faced?
DW: In 2005, we were averaging about five to 10 vehicles a month. At the end of 2007, we were up to more than 300 a month. It was a phenomenal growth.

USBR: How did you meet the demand?
DW: We partnered with established defense contractors and we expanded our operations here while bringing on over 1,000 employees. We ended 2005 with 350, in December 2006 we had 700 and in December 2007 we had 2,000. Currently, we’re at 1,500.

USBR: Was it difficult to find qualified employees?
DW: We went through national search firms and haven’t had much trouble finding ones with the skill sets we need. We also partner with the local technical trade schools to engage in welding. We let them do their welding training here and we get first crack at their students.

On the white collar side, the engineers were a challenge. The bulk of them come from the automotive world, but blast and ballistic engineers we have to home-grow through Dr. Joynt.

And automotive engineers are predominantly located in the Detroit area. Because of the economic conditions in Detroit, we found the engineers couldn’t move because they couldn’t sell their houses. So, we developed an engineering center in Detroit six months ago, and we have around 25 or 30 engineers there.

USBR: What is your vision of the future?
DW: There are three things to our strategy for the short term. One, we will continue our focus on being a technology leader. Two, we will expand our customer base both domestically and internationally. And three, we want to sustain our fleet.

I see us doing a lot of work creating new survivability solutions, sustaining our fleet of vehicles, and servicing a wide range of customers domestically and internationally. Our vehicles are the most survivable on the battlefield. There have been over 3,000 IED-attacks [on its products] and nobody has a better record and, unfortunately, two of them produced fatalities.