Logos continues success of Kestrel surveillance system

Logos Technologies Inc., a small business in Arlington, Va., has won an $8 million contract option to continue its work on wide-area persistent surveillance system known as Kestrel.

The modification and the original contract won by Logos last year are sole-source awards for technology the company developed through the Small Business Innovation Research program.

Kestrel is a 360-degree persistent surveillance system that uses tethered blimps that can scan a large area at once, 24 hours a day, according to the Logos website. In August, the company announced that the system had logged 60,000 hours of operations at forward operating bases in Afghanistan.

The system is named after a species of falcons that hover over open country and then swoop down on their prey.

Logos' Kestrel includes daylight and nighttime sensors and other imagery technology that can detect threats, collect intelligence and support real-time surveillance, the company said.

In its justification documents for the sole source contract awarded last year, the Navy said that $50 million had been spent through Phase I and II of the SBIR program to develop Kestrel. The government has a policy to award sole-source contracts for Phase III or the production phase of these projects. To do otherwise would “result in substantial duplication of cost, which is not expected to be recovered through competition,” the Navy said.

The Phase III contract had an original value of $83.6 million. The $8 million option carries Logos’ work through February 2014.

While the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division is the contracting activity, the Kestrel system is deployed in Afghanistan for the Army