Innovative Solutions & Support

Innovative Solutions & Support

Geoffrey Hedrick, an instrument-rated pilot and electrical engineer, launched the company in 1988 to modernize the flight decks of aging aircraft with digital avionics suites. Early contracts with the U.S. Air Force for C-130 and KC-135 cockpit upgrades established IS&S as a specialist in air-transport category retrofits. The firm remains headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, where it designs, certifies, and manufactures its flat-panel displays, air data computers, and integrated flight management systems. IS&S generates revenue across three distinct lines: production contracts for OEM installs, aftermarket retrofit orders for operational aircraft, and long-term engineering support accounts. The company's flagship ThrustSense autothrottle system on the Pilatus PC-12 and King Air platforms brought full-airframe-parachute-integrated power management to single-pilot operators. Its flat-panel display system serves as a direct replacement for cathode-ray tube instruments on classic Boeing 757 and 767 freighters, with FedEx and other cargo operators among the disclosed end users. On the defense side, the U.S. Air Force, Air National Guard, and foreign military sales customers sustain modernization programs for the E-3 AWACS, C-5 Galaxy, and E-2 Hawkeye using IS&S hardware. IS&S operates as a publicly traded corporation under the ticker ISSC on the Nasdaq, with Shahram Askarpour serving as CEO. The firm publishes quarterly financial statements that detail its book-to-bill ratio and backlog, which stood at approximately $7 million as of late fiscal-year 2024. Total headcount is reported in the low hundreds, spanning engineering, FAA-certified software development, and manufacturing. The company has not disclosed AUM or an institutional investment mandate; it is a manufacturing and engineering business rather than an asset manager. A structural differentiator for IS&S is its independence from the major cockpit prime contractors like Honeywell, Collins Aerospace, and Garmin. It competes directly with those incumbents for FAA and EASA supplemental type certificates on retrofit programs, often pairing its hardware with a third-party autopilot to deliver an integrated replacement for legacy flight systems at a lower price point. The company's strategy of targeting end-of-life support vacuums — where original equipment manufacturers stop producing spare cathode-ray tubes — creates a durable recurring market among fleet operators.