BALTIMORE, Nov. 10, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Northrop Grumman Cobham Intercoms (NGCI) LLC, a company formed by Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) and Cobham (LSE:COB), today announced the reinstatement of work under the Vehicular Intercommunication System Expanded (VIS-X) contract for the U.S. Army. Work performed under the contract will be managed by the Assistant Project Manager, Vehicular Intercom Systems (APM VIS), which is part of the Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems (Team DCATS) Project Office of the Program Executive Office, Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS). VIS-X will provide vehicle crew members and occupants with improved speech intelligibility and hearing protection.
Under the terms of this indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract originally awarded in June 2009 by the Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM) Contracting Center, the NGCI team is required to be able 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. The total value of the 10-year ID/IQ contract has an anticipated not-to-exceed ceiling of $2.4 billion.
After the U.S. Army CECOM's initial award announcement, a losing bidder filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO has denied the protest and the contract will now progress with NGCI as the selected supplier.
In addition to improved speech intelligibility and hearing protection, VIS-X will provide vehicle crew members and occupants with increased command and control of the on-board and external communication assets, connection to future Internet Protocol (IP)-based digital communications networks, VoIP services, and an increased number of user interfaces for use by crew and next generation IP radios. 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.
Cobham's products and services have been at the heart of sophisticated military and civil systems for more than 70 years, keeping people safe, improving communications and enhancing the capability of land, sea, air and space platforms. The Company has four divisions employing more than 12,000 people on five continents, with customers and partners in over 100 countries and annual revenue of more than 1.4 billion pounds sterling / U.S. $ 2.1 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.