Oct 15 2007
Photonic Products Group, Inc., announced today that its MRC Optics subsidiary was awarded a firm-fixed price contract for precision optical components from Lockheed Martin in Orlando, Fla. The components are high-precision aluminum, beryllium, and beryllium alloy optical mirrors for Lot 4 production requirements on the Arrowhead(R) electro-optical system.
This is the fourth consecutive award to MRC Optics for Arrowhead aluminum mirrors since 2002, each for increased quantities. This year's award covers double-digit deliveries per month through December 2008, and contains options for additional quantities. The dollar value of the contract was not disclosed.
Arrowhead is the Army's Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor (M-TADS/PNVS) system that AH-64 Apache helicopter pilots use for safe flight in day, night, or bad weather missions. Arrowhead's advanced technology improves both system performance and system reliability by more than 150 percent while maintenance actions decrease approximately 60 percent. According to Lockheed Martin, streamlining field maintenance from three to two levels will save nearly $1 billion in operation and support costs over the 20-year life of the system. Its modular architecture accommodates a field-retrofit from original TADS/PNVS to the new Arrowhead configuration on both Apache A and D models. The U.S. Army fielded its first unit equipped with Arrowhead in June 2005. It is anticipated that total production for US and UK assets will reach over 900 systems, and production Lots 5 and 6 will extend production through the decade and beyond.
Dan Lehrfeld, President and CEO of Photonic Products Group, commented, "Our MRC Optics team and I are pleased to increase our involvement as a member of Lockheed Martin's Arrowhead team, keeping pace with increasing requirements. The Apache platform has proven itself to be an indispensable tactical warfighting system, and we believe continued production of the Lockheed Martin Arrowhead upgrade will therefore remain a high priority in the DOD."
Tom Crafts, MRC Optics Director of Sales, added, "Through production Lot 3, we provided six different optical components for the Arrowhead system, and earned the highest marks for supplier performance, both in product quality and delivery. We understand the critical importance of quality, support of system production rate, reliability, and on-time delivery to our customers, and this guides how we do business. We are especially proud to see our involvement on the Arrowhead team expanded in Lot 4 to a total of nine critical components."