DRS gets DOD ground surveillance radar work

DRS Technologies Inc. has won $10 million in new orders from the Defense Department for portable ground surveillance radar suitable for a variety of roles.

Under the contracts, DRS Sustainment Systems of St. Louis will furnish its man-portable surveillance and target acquisition radar, or MSTAR, and the accessories needed to support them.

MSTAR is a low-power radar capable of covering a wide area in all weather conditions. Personnel use the radar to locate and classify moving targets, from pedestrians to wheeled and tracked vehicles.

The portable radar system is designed for perimeter security or as part of an integrated security system for force protection, border surveillance or protection of critical infrastructure assets and facilities, the company said. As such, it can be deployed for homeland security missions to help protect power generation facilities, airports, testing ranges and dams.

"Under these new contracts, DRS will have the potential to also provide the DOD with products for wide-area intrusion detection and tracking, to control access to military bases and remotely operated weapons, and to detect explosives and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons," said Thomas G. Cornwell, DRS Sustainment Systems' president said in a statement announcing the work.

DRS' Sustainment Systems is a unit of DRS Technologies, Parsippany, N.J. The parent company, which has more than 10,000 employees and had annual sales of $1.7 billion in fiscal 2006, ranks No. 28 on Washington Technology's 2006 Top 100 list of the largest federal IT contractors.