WASHINGTON - Military electro-optics experts at L-3 KEO in Northampton, Mass., will provide shipboard sights to enable U.S. Navy and Coast Guard warships to hit enemy ships and aircraft with naval gun fire under terms of a $30.8 million order.
L-3 will provide MK20 shipboard electro-optical sights to help keep naval gunfire on target.
Officials of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington are asking L-3 KEO to produce additional MK 20 electro-optical sensor systems (EOSS), radar cross sections kits, shock ring kits, engineering support services, and spares for the Navy and Coast Guard.
The MK 20 EOSS is a check sight and targeting sensor for anti-surface and anti-air warfare and naval gun fire support missions, Navy officials say. L-3 KEO has been building the system since 2005. That year L3-KEO won a Navy contract to provide the EOSS for the Ticonderoga-class Cruiser Modernization Program. Company electro-optical engineers built on the MK46 Optical Sight System to blend new technologies into the MK20 MOD 0 EOSS, as well as integrate the system into the MK34 5-inch deck guns aboard Ticonderoga-class cruisers.
The MK20 EOSS has digital stabilization with fiber-optic gyros, a separate eye-safe laser rangefinder with diode-pumped laser, enhanced built-in test, and improved sensor-to-sensor boresight alignment. The EOSS meets MIL-S-901D heavyweight and large-displacement shock tests.
The MK20 MOD 0 incorporates several technology improvements over the MK46, and new features that support integration with the MK34 Gun Weapons System (GWS).
To integrate with the MK34 deck gun, the EOSS has a new interface electronics unit (IEU) that interfaces with as many as two deck gun computers and three deck gun consoles to provide video, target bearing and range, and system status data to all three, while taking commands from any one.
On this contract modification L-3 will do the work in Northampton, Mass., and Brattleboro, Vt., and should be finished by July 2019.
For more information visit L-3 KEO online at www2.l3t.com/keo, and Naval Sea Systems Command at www.navsea.navy.mil.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.