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Northrop Grumman subsidiary Remotec, Inc. in Clinton, TN received a $45 million firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract for robotic systems, accessories, spare parts, depot level repair support, and operator and technician training. Work will be performed in Clinton, TN and is expected to be complete in February 2011. This contract was not competitively procured by the Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, MD (N00019-07-D-0013).
The DefenseLINK release adds that they “are being procured for use in pre-deployment training and contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Note that Remotec UK makes the Wheelbarrow robots that have seen over a decade of use in Northern Ireland and beyond, and also manufactures the CUTLASS wheeled robot that recently won Britain’s future EOD-bot competition. Remotec USA’s ANDROS family of robots, meanwhile, includes the F6A Andros heavy-duty, Mini-Andros II, Mark V-A1, and Wolverine models. Remotec has won one previous Navy contract for EOD robots on November 26, 2001, valued at $5.6 million.
The US Navy leads procurement of explosive ordnance search & disposal (EOD) robots for the US military, including the MTRS program, which is buying substantial quantities of iRobot Packbot and QinetiQ TALON robots. They are also looking ahead to a next-generation set, with development beginning in 2008 and fielding in 2012-2013.
