Harris Corporation received a $6.6 million research and development contract from the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) to develop and demonstrate the Jigsaw Laser Radar (LADAR) 3D-imaging test-bed system for use on a DP-5X Helicopter UAV.
Laser Radar (LADAR or LIDAR) is similar to millimeter wave radar, but uses lasers to scan and processes the signal echoed from targets, in order to create a 3-D virtual picture of the area. Due to its capability to scan large areas with very high precision, and its ability to gradually build a detailed picture of the area under surveillance, LADAR sensors are usually employed on loitering systems which can look at the target from different angles and match them to templates stored in its onboard processors. As the technology progressed, people also realized that they could use the ladar to look through cover such as trees, towers and camouflage.
The U.S. Army is heeding lessons learned from corporate America by building data centers to consolidate local enterprise application servers now running at hundreds of Army bases nationwide. The plan, announced earlier this month at an Army IT conference, will start later this year with an effort over 12 to 18 months to create two data centers, each hooked up to four bases. Over the next four years, all application servers running at all U.S. bases will be networked together in up to six data centers.
The U.S. Navy has launched its first enterprisewide IT asset management initiative, which is expected to help it make more-effective decisions on the thousands of disparate systems it has deployed worldwide. Since January, the Navy has been using hosted iGovern software from Mountain View, CA’s BDNA Corp. to scan the IP addresses of hardware and software residing in U.S. facilities on its sprawling MCI Inc. network. The data is then stored in an Oracle repository.
Systems and Electronics Inc., St. Louis, MO received a $7.2 million modification to a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for systems technical support and logistics services in support of the M707 Knight Vehicle System.
SEI’s Knight is a precision targeting system consisting of a laser designator / rangefinder, thermal imager, digital command and control, blended inertial / GPS navigation and targeting, and a machine gun. Its mission is to provide precision far target location and laser target designation for both artillery and air-delivered general purpose and precision-guided munitions. The M707 Knight system is mounted on M1025A2 HMMWV jeeps for both heavy and light division forward observers, as well as the Stryker Fire Support Vehicle for the new Brigade Combat Teams. The system was designed from the outset to be both platform and sensor independent.
Recently, DID ran an article about the growing global tactical radio market over the next decade. Niche specialist Ultra TCS in Montreal, Canada recently received a CDN $29 million (USD $23.5 million) contract from its Korean manufacturing licensee Huneed Technologies, its manufacturing licensee in the Republic of Korea. The contract is for upgrade kits for its Frequency Hopping Line Of Sight AN/GRC-512 (V) radio, adding increased traffic capacity and newly developed specialized components. Interoperability with the original AN/GRC-512(V) radio is maintained.
