By Calvin Biesecker
American Science & Engineering Corp. [ASEI] said on Friday that the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) has partially terminated for convenience the company’s contract to develop an advanced X-Ray system that could screen cargo containers for the presence of nuclear threat materials through shielding.
AS&E, along with L-3 Communications [LLL] and SAIC [SAI], each received development awards from DNDO in September 2006 under the Cargo Advanced Automated Radiography System (CAARS) program (Defense Daily, Sept. 14, 2006). However, DNDO eventually realized that the maturity of the technology being developed under CAARS was lagging and last year began to restructure the effort and open some new paths to tackle the problem of detecting nuclear materials that may be shielded (Defense Daily, July 3, 2008).
DNDO last year awarded Rapiscan Systems, a division of OSI Systems [OSIS], a contract to field test an upgraded version of the company’s Eagle Portal cargo and vehicle inspection system to see how well it performs in detecting shielded nuclear materials (Defense Daily, July 15, 2008).
DNDO officials said last summer that companies that hadn’t received CAARS contracts nonetheless continued to develop their respective technologies with the result being the agency decided they were worth looking at, even if they didn’t completely meet the CAARS requirements.
Of AS&E’s original $28.8 million development contract, the company said it will realize at least $25 million under the termination arrangement with DNDO. L-3 said on Friday that it hasn’t received notice of a contract termination.