Navy orders shipboard electro-optical sight from L-3 KEO to help deck guns hit enemy ships and planes
WASHINGTON, 3 June 2015. U.S. Navy shipboard weapons experts needed a shipboard electro-optical sight to enable guided missile cruisers to hit enemy ships and aircraft with naval gun fire. They found their solution from L-3 KEO (formerly Kollmorgen Electro-Optical) in Northampton, Mass.
Officials of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, announced a $14 million contract modification to L-3 KEO on Friday to produce additional MK 20 electro-optical sensor systems (EOSS), radar cross sections kits, support and engineering services.
The MK 20 EOSS is employed as a check sight and targeting sensor for anti-surface and anti-air warfare and naval gun fire support missions, Navy officials say. The company has been building the system since 2005.
That year L3-KEO won a Navy contract to provide the EOSS for the Ticonderoga-class Cruiser Modernization Program. Company electro-optical engineers built on the MK46 Optical Sight System to blend new technologies into the MK20 MOD 0 EOSS, as well as integrate the system into the MK34 5-inch deck guns aboard Ticonderoga-class cruisers.
Related: BAE Systems to upgrade more Navy shipboard machine guns with electro-optical sensors
The MK20 EOSS has digital stabilization with fiber-optic gyros, a separate eyesafe laser rangefinder with diode-pumped laser, enhanced built-in test, and improved sensor-to-sensor boresight alignment. The EOSS meets MIL-S-901D heavyweight and large-displacement shock tests.
The MK20 MOD 0 incorporates several technology improvements over the MK46, and new features that support integration with the MK34 Gun Weapons System (GWS).
To integrate with the MK34 deck gun, the EOSS has a new interface electronics unit (IEU) that interfaces with as many as two deck gun computers and three deck gun consoles to provide video, target bearing and range, and system status data to all three, while taking commands from any one, L-3 officials say.
On this contract modification L-3 will do the work in Northampton, Mass., and should be finished by December 2017. For more information contact L-3 KEO online at http://www2.l-3com.com/keo, or Naval Sea Systems Command at www.navsea.navy.mil.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
