Lockheed Martin Delivers M‑TADS/PNVS Modernized Laser Rangefinder for the U.S. Army’s Apache Helicopter

ORLANDO, Fla., Decem­ber 7th, 2011 — Lock­heed Mar­tin [NYSE:LMT] deliv­ered the first Mod­ern­ized Day Sen­sor Assem­bly (M‑DSA) upgrade pro­to­type units to the U.S. Army for use on the Apache attack helicopter.

Five Sys­tem Design and Devel­op­ment (SDD) Laser Rangefind­er Des­ig­na­tors (LRFDs) were recent­ly deliv­ered to the Army under a three-year con­tract award­ed to Lock­heed Mar­tin in Sep­tem­ber 2008 to mod­ern­ize the Apache’s Day Sen­sor Assembly.

The LRFD is the chief tar­get­ing aid for the Apache, estab­lish­ing the range to the tar­get for accu­rate weapon aim­ing. For the HELLFIRE II mis­sile, the LRFD des­ig­nates the aim point with a laser spot. Addi­tion­al­ly, the M‑DSA LRFD adds an eye-safe laser for safe train­ing exercises.

“Deliv­ery of these five SDD lasers proves the wis­dom of our approach to mod­ern­iz­ing the rest of the TADS/PNVS,” said Dr. Wayne Hudry, U.S. Army Apache Sen­sors deputy prod­uct man­ag­er. “As the first crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the upgrades com­ing for the M‑DSA, the LRFD pro­vides an improved tac­ti­cal laser that sup­ports future weapons, as well as an eye-safe laser that pro­vides sol­diers the capa­bil­i­ty to train like they fight.”

The first phase of the upgrades is being per­formed to mit­i­gate obso­les­cence and enhance the system’s per­for­mance, as well as to increase the Mod­ern­ized Tar­get Acqui­si­tion Des­ig­na­tion Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sen­sor (M‑TADS/PNVS) system’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly accom­mo­date future weapons.

A sec­ond phase includes upgrades to the vis­i­ble col­or sen­sor, laser spot track­er, iner­tial mea­sure­ment unit and day sen­sor struc­ture assem­bly and adds a laser pointer/marker com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. This effort recent­ly com­plet­ed a suc­cess­ful crit­i­cal design review in its SDD contract.

“This deliv­ery is a crit­i­cal step in the Army’s ini­tia­tive to put more capa­ble and main­tain­able tar­get­ing sys­tems in the hands of Apache air­crews,” said Matt Hoff­man, pro­gram direc­tor of M‑TADS/PNVS in Lock­heed Martin’s Mis­siles and Fire Con­trol busi­ness. “The ful­ly mod­ern­ized M‑TADS/PNVS will sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness for the Apache crews, and be a deci­sive fac­tor in the suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion of their missions.”

Head­quar­tered in Bethes­da, Md., Lock­heed Mar­tin is a glob­al secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny that employs about 126,000 peo­ple world­wide and is prin­ci­pal­ly engaged in the research, design, devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­ture, inte­gra­tion and sus­tain­ment of advanced tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems, prod­ucts and ser­vices. The Corporation’s 2010 sales from con­tin­u­ing oper­a­tions were $45.8 billion.

Melis­sa Hilliard, (407) 761‑0077
e‑mail melissa.hilliard@lmco.com