SI International wins contract with Army's Defense Ammunition Center
Officials at SI International, an information-technology and network-solutions (IT) company in Reston, Va., announced the company will be supporting the U.S. Army's Defense Ammunition Center (DAC). SI International engineers will design, host, and operate a Learning-Management System (LMS) and a Learning-Content-Management System (LCMS) to support ongoing and future Web-based training initiatives for the DAC. The contract is valued at $5 million. SI International's team members include Oklahoma State University's (OSU) Education, Research, and Economic Development Foundation, OSU's Institute for Telecommunications, and OSU's College of Education. The DAC has the mission of providing ammunition training, explosives-safety training, and logistics support to Department of Defense military and civilian personnel, other federal agencies, and military students from allied nations. The primary focus of DAC is to support ammunition readiness for the 21st century war-fighter as well as supporting the global war on terrorism. For more information about SI International, go online at www.si-intl.com.
Harris delivers Sierra to JTRS Cluster 1 Cryptographic Subsystem team
Engineers at Harris Corp. RF Communications Division in Rochester, N.Y., delivered the company's Sierra II Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and core cryptographic software to the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Cluster 1 Cryptographic Subsystem development team for integration and testing on a JTRS cryptographic-subsystem board. JTRS has been named the U.S. Department of Defense "Radio of the Future" and will include a family of software-reprogrammable radios sharing a common digital architecture that can be applied to multiple platforms and support multiple waveforms. Harris officials say they expect to provide more than $500 million in radio-system design, development, and production for the JTRS Cluster 1 program as part of the Boeing-led industry team. Harris also is on the NetForce 5 team in pursuit of JTRS Cluster 5 and the Boeing-led team in pursuit of the Airborne, Maritime, Fixed-Station (AMF) JTRS. For more information on Harris, visit the company's Web site at www.harris.com.
Elbit, Honeywell to supply HUD systems to commercial air-transport market
Officials at Elbit Systems Ltd. in Haifa, Israel, have joined hands with Honeywell leaders to supply head-up display (HUD) systems to the commercial air-transport market. Honeywell's first program under this agreement will be to equip a major cargo-carrier's fleet of wide-body aircraft with the advanced HUD, company officials say. Under the terms of the new contract, awarded by Honeywell International Air Transport Division, Elbit Systems will supply overhead electro-optical projection units, which will be integrated into Honeywell's new HUD system for Honeywell's commercial air-transport customers. The electro-optical units are based on advanced HUD technologies developed by Elbit Systems' subsidiary Elop Electro-Optics Industries Ltd. for military use.
Vista Controls single-board computer targets Force XXI command and control
Engineers at Vista Controls in Santa Clarita, Calif., say their VCP P3A SBC single-board computer meets the FBCB2 Common Card program's hardware and software requirements. FBCB2 provides near-term C2 (command and control) capabilities to Force XXI units at brigade and subordinate echelons. Equipped with interfaces for global positioning system (GPS), radio, satellite, and Army Tactical Internet, the FBCB2 mission system replaces paper maps and voice radio with digital capabilities. Integrating the data collected from these units enables the VCP P3A operating system to provide heightened situational awareness by displaying a common "picture" of the battlefield, showing geographical location of individual soldiers, weapons/platforms, and command posts. Designed to be compliant to the FBCB2 Common Card Specification, the VCP P3A uses Socket 370 Intel Pentium high-speed (as fast as 1 gigahertz) processor, a 133-megahertz system bus and a PC266 memory bus. For more information regarding VCP P3A, contact the company online at www.vistacontrols.com.
U.S. Geological Survey looks to DigitalGlobe for satellite imagery
Officials at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) awarded DigitalGlobe in Longmont, Colo., a portion of a $15 million multiyear contract for the acquisition of high-resolution commercial-satellite imagery. The contract provides the USGS and its partner agencies with coordinated access to the remote-sensing industry's products and services. "These contracts directly support the president's Commercial Remote Sensing Space Policy, signed in 2003, by providing a centralized mechanism for civil agencies to acquire commercial remote-sensing products to support their mission needs in an efficient and coordinated way," says Barbara Ryan, USGS associate director for geography. USGS will have access to DigitalGlobe's QuickBird Image Library, containing hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the highest-resolution commercial-satellite-imagery data, as well as access to new data acquisitions. Federal, state, and local agencies that rely on geospatial information can leverage this USGS contract for landbase mapping and other applications, including natural-hazard and disaster response, homeland security, land, and resource management, infrastructure planning and management, policy decision-making, and scientific study. For more information, visit www.digitalglobe.com.
Northrop Grumman displays and navigation systems fly on U.S. Navy helicopters
Pilots of two U.S. Navy helicopters will benefit from improved situational awareness and navigation capabilities through cockpit displays and inertial navigation systems to be provided by Northrop Grumman Corp. in Woodland Hills, Calif. Lockheed Martin in Bethesda, Md., the prime contractor on this program, awarded equipment contracts for the MH-60R and MH-60S multimission helicopters to Northrop Grumman's Navigation Systems division. Developed by Lockheed Martin for the Navy's MH-60 program, the all-glass common cockpit is available in a variety of interface and global-positioning-system (GPS) configurations, the LN-100G navigation system combines inertial navigation and GPS features to provide attitude, heading, velocity, and precise aircraft position. The LN-100G system uses standard embedded-GPS modules and is positioned to support current GPS.
Motorola to buy Force Computers
Officials at Motorola, Inc., in Tempe, Ariz., signed a definitive agreement to acquire Force Computers in Fremont, Calif., an embedded computing business owned by Solectron Corp. The agreement is subject to various closing conditions, including receipt of regulatory approvals. Motorola officials say they expect the deal to close during the third calendar quarter of 2004. Force Computers is a designer and supplier of open, standards-based and custom-embedded computing solutions for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Once the deal is closed, Force will be integrated with the Motorola Computer Group in Tempe, Motorola officials say. For more information, visit www.motorola.com.
DigitalNet awarded DISA contract
Officials at DigitalNet in Herndon, Va., will provide an Information Assurance Vulnerability Management (IAVM) solution to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The U.S. Strategic Command sponsored the requirement on behalf of the Department of Defense (DOD). DigitalNet will integrate and deploy an automated IAVM tool that will provide network administrators and security personnel with a mechanism for verifying application or nonapplication of DOD Computer Emergency-Response Team (CERT) Information Assurance Vulnerability Management Notices. The IAVM tool will allow system administrators to conduct self-assessments of known vulnerabilities on all system assets and track the status through closure. The DigitalNet IAVM solution offered to DISA includes an integrated family of vulnerability-management solutions to help DOD safeguard its digital assets, company officials say. For more information, go online at www.digitalnet.com.
