By B.C. Kessner
A multi-year award to provide the Canadian Army with Thermal Weapon Sights (TWS), streaming international inquiries, new technologies, and the latest Army follow-on deal pushing contract values over the $1 billion mark, all have BAE Systems officials seeing green about the future of TWS.
“Feedback has been very good on TWS, the soldiers like it,” Bruce Zukauskas, BAE’s director of soldier systems told Defense Daily. “That is reflected in well over $1 billion in orders since 2004.”
The Army awarded BAE Systems a $123 million contract for continued production of TWS designed to improve situational awareness and survivability for men and women in combat. The order was the most recent under a five-year, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract.
BAE recently received a $14 million multi-year contract to provide these sights to the Canadian Army. The company continues to receive inquiries from “most NATO allies” and other U.S. government entities, Zukauskas said.
BAE to date has delivered more than 80,000 sights to meet urgent Army fielding requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan. TWS allow operators of individual and crew-served weapons to see deep into the battlefield in darkness and through smoke, fog, and other obscurants, helping them detect and identify targets at longer ranges.
BAE produces light, medium, and heavy thermal weapon sights using the company’s MicroIR uncooled infrared sensor technology to generate superior IR imagery without the need for bulky, power-consuming cryogenic cooling equipment.
The electronics technology is used on rifles, machine guns, and mounted weapon systems. Operating ranges for the sights vary from about 680 meters for the light, rifle-mounted system, upward to about 2200 meters for the heavy sight intended for .50-cal., Mk 19, and some sniper weapon systems, Zukauskas said. All use AA batteries, providing a consistent battery source, he added.
The current phase of the Army contract for about 100,000 units will run from 2009-2012 and make BAE the number one supplier of TWS, he said.
BAE has been producing TWS for the Army since 2005, while Finmeccanica‘s DRS Technologies has supplied TWS for the Marine Corps. The Army’s PEO Soldier is the Pentagon’s lead for TWS.
“We are engaged with PEO Solider on current and next generation TWS,” Zukauskas said.
While Zukauskas realizes that logistics and supply chain considerations make it unlikely for BAE to sell current generation TWS to the Marine Corps, when thinking down the road he said, “We would love to love to establish BAE as the choice provider of thermal weapon sights to the Marine Corps.”
Zukauskas said the third generation family of sites is in the developmental phase, with the Army as the lead. The next family of sights will have more, smaller pixels, with a smaller focal plane, and improved resolution to better discriminate targets.
BAE is also working to develop clip-on thermal sights that would allow soldiers to keep their day-view optics mounted on their rifles, something they cannot do currently when switching to thermal, Zukauskas said.
“Beyond that, I think you will be seeing ‘fused technologies’ that provide a combined day view and thermal image,” he said. “We are going to keep looking for ways to provide [thermal weapon] sights that are smaller, lighter, and less expensive…and help [soldiers] to perform better in their missions.”