Leonardo DRS has received a $132.1 million production order to deliver the first updated rugged tablets for the Army’s next-generation battle command platform, the company said Wednesday.
The first order for Mounted Family of Computer Systems (MFoCS) II arrives as the Army looks to ramp up fielding of the dismountable tablets used to run its new Joint Battle Command-Platform (JBC-P).
“As the Army continues its modernization efforts, MFoCS will serve as a critical enabler of the Mounted Computing Environment and the modernized network,” Bill Guyan, vice president of Leonardo DRS’ land electronics business, said in a statement. “MFoCS II was designed to meet the extreme requirements of mission-critical reliability in the most demanding environments combined with robust security enhancements to ensure trusted performance today and into the future.”
Leonardo DRS was initially awarded a 10-year, $842 million deal last May for the MFoCS II, which followed its earlier work to deliver the Army’s original rugged tablets (Defense Daily, May 29 2018).
Army officials have said they intend to fully field MFoCS II by FY ‘2023.
MFoCS II is built to include “critical system capability upgrades, cybersecurity improvements, and multi-touch displays,” according to company officials.
“In addition, there are significant performance enhancements of the platform computing server as the Army continues to improve the JBC-P systems used for tactical situational awareness and global ‘Blue Force Tracking’ and In-Transit Visibility logistics tracking,” Leonardo DRS officials said in a statement.
Under the production order, Leonardo DRS will deliver the dismountable tablets, processor units, docking stations, keyboard units, and multi-touch screen display units.