Farmingdale firm to create radar systems for India

Telephonics Corp. has signed an agreement with an India conglomerate to create aerospace surveillance and friend-or-foe radar systems for the Indian military, the companies said Thursday.

Telephonics of Farmingdale will also make air traffic management systems for use in India by commercial air transit systems, and for the government's homeland security agencies.

Telephonics, with about 1,400 workers, has headquarters in Farmingdale and an electronics systems plant in Huntington. It specializes in airborne maritime surveillance radar and aircraft intercommunication management systems.

The partner is Mahindra & Mahindra a $12.5 billion multi-national corporate group based in Mumbai, with more than 137,000 workers in more than 100 countries. It is India's major producer of utility vehicles and trucks.

"Telephonics is an acknowledged leader in the field and will allow us to achieve our ambition to become a leading systems integrator for defense applications," Brig Khutub Hai, chief executive of Mahindra Defence Systems, a division of Mahindra & Mahindra, said in a Thursday news release.

Telephonics already has a relationship with the Indian military, supplying airborne communications for its Boeing P-8I, a military variant of the 737, used for anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. said the partnership will supply the systems both to civilian customers and the Indian defense ministry.

Mahindra described the partnership as a memorandum of understanding to form a joint venture.

Together Telephonics and Mahindra will establish a factory in India to make and service airborne radar systems for Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., and airborne maritime surveillance systems for the Indian Navy and Coast Guard.

The goal of the partnership is to help fulfill the Indian Ministry of Defence's "requirement of having a capable indigenous defence private sector," Anand Mahindra, managing director of the Mahindra Group, said in a prepared statement.

Telephonics is a division of Griffon Corp., a holding company that manages four wholly owned subsidiaries -- Telephonics; Ames True Temper, a maker of hand tools for landscaping; Clopay Building Products, a garage door maker; and Clopay Plastic Products, a maker of films and laminates.

Griffon Corp. shares, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, closed at $8.51 Thursday, down $0.21 for the day; the price represented a 33 percent decline so far this year.

Photo: A Boeing P-8I. Telephonics supplies airborne communications for India's fleet.

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