ITT Exelis and partner win $7M laser communications contract
ITT Exelis and NOVASOL will build laser communications system to move data around the battlefield for the Navy and Marine Corps.
ITT Exelis and its partner, Innovative Technical Solutions Inc., known commercially as NOVASOL, have won a $7 million contract to develop a laser communications system for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
Exelis will lead systems engineering, product development and production; NOVASOL will tailor the design and development of laser communication technologies, ITT Exelis said.
The team will develop a line-of-sight, high-bandwidth system that will be used for ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore and ground-to-ground mission applications.
“Today’s missions require moving huge amounts of data – more than three gigabytes per second – all in near real time,” said Gary Tarantino, manager of advanced systems and strategic initiatives for Exelis Electronic Systems. The benefit of using a laser communications system is that the risk of radio frequency interference is eliminated, he added.
The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Va., and the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., are the contracting activities.