Air Force Awards Ascent Vision $23M for C-UAS Systems
Ascent Vision Technologies says it has won an Air Force contract worth over $23 million to deliver a suite of counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) vehicles. Montana-based Ascent said it will provide its eXpeditionary Mobile Air Defense Integrated System, called X-MADIS, with deliveries beginning in 2020. The X-MADIS can detect, locate, track, identify and defeat small UAS systems using radar, optics, radio frequency detection and electronic command and control mitigation of the aircraft. The company says it was selected for the award after 18 months of testing, trials, and evaluation across multiple military services and operational spectrums. Ascent’s L-MADIS, a variant of the MADIS family of drones, was recently used by the U.S. Marine Corps to down an Iranian drone in the Persian Gulf while it was harassing a U.S. Navy ship. The company says the defeat of the Iranian drone was the latest event in the past 18 months of successful MADIS deployments in countering enemy UAS in theater.
Block MEMs Receives $3.5M as Part of SRI Team on DARPA Chem Detection Contract
Block MEMS says it has been awarded $3.5 million as part of the SRI International team that recently received a multi-year contract worth $11.6 million from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) do develop advanced sensors that can detect chemical threats in complex urban environments. The award to SRI was made as part of the SIGMA+ Program, which is aimed at developing a persistent, real-time, early detection system for the full spectrum of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive weapons of mass destruction threats at the city-to-region scale. Block said it will leverage its eye-safe laser capability to generate chemical detection maps via standoff sensing in a complex three-dimensional urban topography. “The SIGMA+ contract extends Block’s standoff, chemical detection capabilities to the real-time, monitoring and mapping of urban environments. Block’s quantum cascade laser technology and advanced algorithms are ideally suited for this application and we look forward to the development and, ultimately, deployment of such systems by operational partners.”
CBP Awards Dev Technology Group $49M in Support of Cargo Systems Applications
Customs and Border Protection has awarded Dev Technology Group a potential $48.6 million interim contract to provide application development and architecture and engineering support services for the Cargo Systems Program Directorate to develop and support cargo systems applications. The award is under protest by two losing bidders with the Court of Federal Claims. Dev Technology’s contract has a $36.5 million base period that runs from June 10 until Dec. 9 and a single option period worth $12.1 million that would run until Feb. 9, 2020 if needed. The support is for CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment and includes collections features, cargo release features, post release features, and ITDS single window and manifest features.