Lockheed Books Potential $485M Navigation Pod FMS Contract

lockheedmartin.com

Lockheed Books Potential $485M Navigation Pod FMS Contract – GovCon Wire

Brenda Marie Rivers May 19, 2020 

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has secured a potential five-year, $485M contract from the U.S. Air Force to produce navigation pod hardware for integration onto fixed-wing platforms of multiple foreign military sales customers.

The company will fabricate, integrate, modernize, test and ship nondevelopmental item pods intended for  navigation and targeting functions, the Department of Defense said Monday.

Specifically, the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract encompasses delivery orders related to the Sniper Infrared Search and Track, and Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night systems.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center will obligate $34.9M in FMS funds for the initial order from Morocco.

Other international countries that can order hardware via the IDIQ are Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey.

DoD expects contract work to conclude by May 2025.

#####

LANTIRN

Mission
Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting Infrared for Night, or LANTIRN, is a system for use on the Air Force's premier fighter aircraft -- the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-16C/D Fighting Falcon. LANTIRN significantly increases the combat effectiveness of these aircraft, allowing them to fly at low altitudes, at night and under-the-weather to attack ground targets with a variety of precision-guided and unguided weapons.

Features
LANTIRN consists of a navigation pod and a targeting pod integrated and mounted externally beneath the aircraft.

The navigation pod provides high-speed penetration and precision attack on tactical targets at night and in adverse weather. The navigation pod also contains a terrain-following radar and a fixed infrared sensor, which provides a visual cue and input to the aircraft's flight control system, enabling it to maintain a pre-selected altitude above the terrain and avoid obstacles. This sensor displays an infrared image of the terrain in front of the aircraft, to the pilot, on a head-up display. The navigation pod enables the pilot to fly along the general contour of the terrain at high speed, using mountains, valleys and the cover of darkness to avoid detection. The pod houses the first wide-field, forward-looking infrared navigation system for Air Force air-superiority fighters.

The targeting pod contains a high-resolution, forward-looking infrared sensor (which displays an infrared image of the target to the pilot), a laser designator-rangefinder for precise delivery of laser-guided munitions, a missile boresight correlator for automatic lock-on of AGM-65D imaging infrared Maverick missiles, and software for automatic target tracking. These features simplify the functions of target detection, recognition and attack and permit pilots of single-seat fighters to attack targets with precision-guided weapons on a single pass. Source: af.mil