Mar 15 2010
Lockheed Martin (LM) has been awarded a three-year contract valued at $36.8 million by the U.S. Army to support the Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor TADS/PNVS (M-TADS/PNVS) and TADS/PNVS systems for Arizona Support Center’s AH-64 Apache helicopters.
The Arizona Support Center is responsible for the induction, refurbishing and modification of legacy PNVS/TADS systems for incorporation into M-TADS/PNVS.
The contract also includes activities related to fielding in light of the modernization scheme. Fielding activities involve dispatching a team of product-support technicians from Orlando to global locations of the U.S. Army Apache helicopters for the testing and installation of the recently modified M-TADS/PNVS systems on the helicopters.
As an enhanced electro-optical fire control system, M-TADS/PNVS offers advanced pilotage and targeting capabilities to pilots of AH-64D helicopters, thereby ensuring improved mission effectiveness irrespective of day/night and even when helicopters are subject to adverse weather conditions.
According to Col. Shane Openshaw, Program Manager at Apache, the M-TADS/PNVS system is provided to each Apache battalion that has been deployed to support existing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Openshaw claims that this M-TADS/PNVS system has been the number-one request from the Apache helicopter pilot since 1997. The performance of these Apache helicopters has been excellent starting from the factory to the foxhole stage of mission operations.
Global security company, Lockheed Martin, headquartered at Bethesda, employs around 140,000 people world over, and focuses on research, development, design, manufacture, sustainment and integration of state-of-the-art technological products, services, and systems.