CRANE, Ind., 5 Sept. 2010. U.S. Navy special forces weapons experts needed combat lighting and target-designation capability to help .50 caliber machine gun crews with target detection, recognition, and identification in low-light and low-observation conditions. They found their solution from laser and illumination specialist Sure Fire LLC in Fountain Valley, Calif.

CHARLOTTE, N.C., 4 Sept. 2010. The U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Patuxent River, Md., awarded General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products a $9.8 million contract to produce the M61A2 20mm Gatling gun system for the F/A-18E/F aircraft. Production work will be performed at the General Dynamics facility in Saco, Maine, and the program will be managed at General Dynamics' Burlington Technology Center in Vermont. Work is expected to be completed in September 2012.

MELBOURNE, Fla., 3 Sept. 2010. Harris Corp., an international communications and information technology company, won a 2.5-year, $18 million contract to produce telemetry modules supporting the U.S. Air Force Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). The AIM-120 AMRAAM takes advantage of the accurate target detection capabilities offered by the advanced radar systems of modern-day warplanes. This follow-on contract brings the overall value of the program for Harris to $154 million since 1991.

HOUSTON, 2 Sept. 2010. BAE Systems won a $629 million contract from the U.S. Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Joint Program Office (JPO) to upgrade 1,700 Caiman MRAP vehicles. The upgraded vehicle, called the Caiman Multi-Terrain Vehicle (MTV), integrates a refurbished and improved armored capsule from an existing Caiman with a new high-power automotive power train, chassis, and independent suspension.

LEXINGTON, Mass., 1 Sept. 2010. U.S. Army officials needed thermal weapon sights for rifles, machine guns, and mounted weapon systems for infantry soldiers in combat. They found their solution from the BAE Systems Electronic Solutions segment in Lexington, Mass. BAE Systems won a $123 million Army contract to continue production of thermal weapon sights that improve situational awareness and survivability for infantry soldiers, company officials announced today. The order increases the BAE Systems total thermal weapon sight contract value to more than $1 billion since 2004, company officials say.

MONROVIA, Calif., 1 Sept. 2010. AeroVironment Inc. (AV) won a contract delivery order valued at $35,265,662 for digital Puma All Environment (AE) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), spares, and training services. The equipment and services were procured under the existing USSOCOM All Environment Capable Variant (AECV) indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract. Puma systems, which are capable of performing multiple surveillance and reconnaissance missions over water or land, will be used to protect troops and vehicles in combat areas.

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md., 5 Sept. 2010. The U.S. Army is surveying industry to find companies able to design and build an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) about the size of a compact car that can carry as much as 1,200 pounds of overhead cover, sandbags, small arms ammunition, food, water, heavy weapons, medical supplies, and other supplies to support small-unit infantry operations.

WASHINGTON, 4 Sept. 2010. A Northrop Grumman-built NASA Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) observed Hurricane Earl, days after it studied Tropical Storm Frank, as part of NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Process (GRIP) experiment. GRIP is a NASA program designed to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes.

NASHUA, N.H., 3 Sept. 2010. Infrared sensor specialists at the BAE Systems Electronic Solutions sector in Nashua, N.H., are developing the advanced processor for a military nighttime persistent surveillance system of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., that uses staring infrared sensors for long-term persistent surveillance battlefields and in urban areas from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

WALLINGFORD, Conn., 5 Sept. 2010. Times Microwave Systems in Wallingford, Conn., is introducing the LP-BTR RF lightning protector and surge protection products designed to safeguard RF communications networks from extreme fluctuations in power. These devices replace the Times Microwave LP-BTR50 product family.

AMBLER, Pa., 4 Sept. 2010. MEN Micro Inc. now offers the 6U field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based, triple-redundant A602 64-bit VMEbus single board computer (SBC) that uses a lock-step architecture keeping software development at a minimum for avionics applications.

LAUREL, Md., 3 Sept. 2010. PCI Systems Inc. in Laurel, Md., is offering A 3U OpenVPX conduction cooled armored portable six-slot chassis for rugged conduction-cooled embedded systems. The chassis is a COTS product for instrumentation and can be used for several applications by changing the switch mezzanine. The rugged enclosure with integrated GPS has a mezzanine card with three-axis shock sensor and chassis-management field-programmable gate array (FPGA), eight-lane-per-slot PCI Express Gen2 switches, with optional Gigabit Ethernet switch and Serial RapidIO switch.