Leonardo DRS has been awarded a $231.5 million contract, thru 2028, for LLDR 3 (Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder), a day/night manportable (tripod-mounted) modular target location and laser designator system.
The reprogramming of $548 million for the U.S. Army’s HUD 3.0/IVAS program has been approved by Congress. Funds are being moved from the Defense Health Program’s operations and maintenance account to the research and development account for the development of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), a soldier system that will make extensive use of infrared detectors and digital low-light-level detectors.
Microlens based metalenses have the potential of being monolithically integrated with infrared FPAs to increase FPA operating temperature and sensitivity.
A new capability called HUD 3.0/IVAS (Head Up Display/Integrated Visual Augmentation System) is on a fast-track to provide greatly enhanced mobility and situational awareness to Soldiers and Marines. The system will feature advanced digital infrared, digital low-light-level and fused sensors, together with artificial intelligence, live reality and integration with Nett Warrior (an Android-based smartphone.) The system will also have a Synthetic Training capability.
The system is getting funding and attention from the Top at DoD
BAE Systems (Lexington, Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire) is reorganizing its commercial uncooled core business. The responsibility for marketing and sales of uncooled VOx cores is now in Lexington at the location of the company’s uncooled foundry.
FLIR Systems, which has long concentrated on its mature InSb FPA technology has been internally developing Type 2 Superlattice (T2SL) FPAs for use in future products.
The company, which has been part of the VISTA consortium, is making use of the InAs/GaSb epitaxial structures that have been developed by JPL and NRL under the VISTA program and grown by IntelliEPI and IQE. It is expected that the company will soon introduce a camera core based on a HOT MWIR 640 x 512 FPA with 15 micron pixels.Raytheon Vision Systems (Goleta, California) is in the fortunate position of having the largest portfolio of advanced infrared detectors in the world, including mercury cadmium telluride (MCT), InSb, InGaAs, uncooled VOx microbolometers and others. Recently, the company’s III-V T2SL (Type II Superlattice)/nBn detectors have also reached a level of maturity that enabled Raytheon to win the contract for the next-generation Distributed Aperture System (DAS) for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The company has been awarded a Rapid Innovation Fund (RIF) award to develop dualband (MWIR/LWIR) T2SL FPAs for potential use in the 3rd Gen FLIR program. Currently, 3rdGen FLIR development is based on 1280 x 720 dualband MCT FPAs.