USA — Integration of VIS‑X Vehicle Intercom System Into U.S. Army Stryker Systems Integration Lab

Northrop Grum­man Cob­ham Team Suc­cess­ful­ly Inte­grates VIS‑X Vehi­cle Inter­com Sys­tem Into U.S. Army Stryk­er Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion Lab
BALTIMORE, May 3, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Northrop Grum­man Cob­ham Inter­coms (NGCI) LLC, a com­pa­ny formed by Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion (NYSE:NOC) and Cob­ham (LSE:COB), has announced the suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion of the Vehi­cle Inter­com Sys­tem — Expand­ed (VIS‑X) into the U.S. Army’s Stryk­er sys­tems inte­gra­tion lab (SIL) envi­ron­ment at the U.S. Army Tank-Auto­mo­tive and Arma­ments Com­mand Life Cycle Man­age­ment Com­mand in War­ren, Mich.

Work­ing with the Pro­gram Man­ag­er Stryk­er Brigade Com­bat Team, VIS‑X hard­ware was seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed into the Stryk­er SIL, replac­ing the AN/VIC‑3 inter­com sys­tem. The inte­gra­tion demon­strat­ed the form, fit and func­tion com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of VIS‑X with AN/VIC‑3 and the abil­i­ty to add new com­mu­ni­ca­tions fea­tures with­out increas­ing the sys­tem foot­print or re-wiring the Stryk­er vehi­cle. VIS‑X is NGCI’s next-gen­er­a­tion capa­bil­i­ty, replac­ing Northrop Grum­man and Cobham’s high­ly suc­cess­ful AN/VIC‑3, of which more than 85,000 sys­tems have been fielded. 

“Dur­ing our Stryk­er SIL inte­gra­tion, we demon­strat­ed that VIS‑X reduces the total elec­tron­ic box count by 30 per­cent and increas­es the num­ber of avail­able users, radios and alarms,” said John Jadik, vice pres­i­dent of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Intel­li­gence and Net­work­ing Solu­tions for Northrop Grumman’s Land and Self Pro­tec­tion Sys­tems Divi­sion. “Exist­ing VIC‑3 high­way cables, head­sets and brack­ets were re-used, allow­ing for an easy upgrade to vehi­cles already uti­liz­ing the AN/VIC‑3 and reduc­ing the risk asso­ci­at­ed with new vehi­cle implementations.” 

With the inte­gra­tion of VIS‑X into future upgrades of the Stryk­er and oth­er wheeled and tracked vehi­cles, advanced fea­tures includ­ing 10/100/1Gbit Eth­er­net, VoIP, SIP calls, point-to-point call­ing, mul­ti­ple inter­com groups, remote radio con­trol, radio re-trans­mis­sion, and alphanu­mer­ic dis­plays and menus become avail­able to the sys­tems inte­gra­tor and the warfight­er. VIS‑X can be used in both new pro­duc­tion and lega­cy vehi­cle plat­forms, allow­ing the warfight­er to uti­lize the same state-of-the-art equip­ment regard­less of vehi­cle type or age. 

VIS‑X is being sup­plied under a 10-year indef­i­nite delivery/indefinite quan­ti­ty con­tract with a not-to-exceed ceil­ing of $2.4 bil­lion award­ed to NGCI in 2009 by the U.S. Army Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Elec­tron­ics Com­mand. The VIS‑X pro­gram is man­aged by the Vehic­u­lar Inter­com Sys­tems project office, which is part of the Defense Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Army Trans­mis­sion Sys­tems (DCATS) project office of the Army’s Pro­gram Exec­u­tive Office, Enter­prise Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (PEO EIS). Under the terms of the con­tract, the NGCI team is required to deliv­er up to 500 VIS‑X sys­tems per month dur­ing the first year fol­low­ing com­ple­tion of First Arti­cle Test­ing and up to 2,000 sys­tems per month in sub­se­quent years. 

Cobham’s prod­ucts and ser­vices have been at the heart of sophis­ti­cat­ed mil­i­tary and civ­il sys­tems for more than 75 years, keep­ing peo­ple safe, improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and enhanc­ing the capa­bil­i­ty of land, sea, air and space plat­forms. The Com­pa­ny has four divi­sions employ­ing 12,000 peo­ple on five con­ti­nents, with cus­tomers and part­ners in over 100 coun­tries and annu­al rev­enue of some 1.9 bil­lion pounds ster­ling / U.S. $3 billion. 

Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion is a lead­ing glob­al secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny whose 120,000 employ­ees pro­vide inno­v­a­tive sys­tems, prod­ucts, and solu­tions in aero­space, elec­tron­ics, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, ship­build­ing and tech­ni­cal ser­vices to gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial cus­tomers worldwide. 

CONTACT: Ellen Hamil­ton
Northrop Grum­man Elec­tron­ic Sys­tems
(224) 625‑4693
ellen.hamilton@ngc.com

Mon­i­ca Hall­man
Cob­ham
(703) 414‑5318
monica.hallman@cobham.com

Text- / Bildquelle (source):
Northrop Grum­man Elec­tron­ic Systems