By John McHale
MELBOURNE, Fla. - Officials at Paravant Computer Systems, a division of Paravant Inc. in Morristown, N.J., are supplying about 30,000 Applique+ V4 ruggedized computers over the next 11 years to TRW in Redondo Beach, Calif., for the U.S. Army's Force-21 Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2) program.
Paravant Computer is splitting the contract with Litton Data Systems in Agoura Hills, Calif., says Bill Craven, president of Paravant.
"Each of us did our own designs," and TRW specified the input and output parts of the system, Craven says. The computers are not identical but have enough similarities that you can pull out a Paravant Applique and plug in one from Litton without any problems, Craven explains.
The computers will be in every combat vehicle including the Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle and the Hum-Vee, giving each one situational awareness capability on the digital battlefield, Craven says. The Applique's devices produced at Paravant will sell for about $12,000 apiece, Craven says.
Paravant's version is based on their rugged vehicle system computer, which company officials will drop to offer Applique devices, Craven says. Paravant engineers are providing four line replaceable units of the Applique+ V - the processor, display, keyboard, and hard drive, he adds.
The single-board computer will be in a CompactPCI from factor with an Intel processor running at 500 MHz, says Al Zimmerman, vice president of business development at Paravant Computers. The hardware has a 12-inch display a 6-gigabyte hard drive, Zimmerman adds.
The contract is scheduled to begin in May 2000 and run through January 2001, will be approximately $13 million, Paravant officials say. The prime contract, awarded to TRW, could potentially exceed $100 million during its 11-year life cycle.
In the first phase, approximately 2,000 computers will support the FBCB2 program, but the potential count of production computers may be as high as 59,522 systems over an 11-year period.
