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February 1, 2018 | Local, C4ISR

L3 WESCAM wins defense contracts valued at more than US$250 million

L3 WESCAM announced on Feb. 1 that it ended the second half of 2017 with more than US$250 million in contracts from military and law enforcement customers for its MX-Series electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) products and in-service support products and services.

The orders will provide a range of MX imaging and targeting solutions to both experienced MX end users and military customers new to L3 WESCAM products and services.

“For more than 40 years, L3 has been a key supplier of ISR technologies, including sensors and systems, to help military and law enforcement agencies stay on the leading edge as surveillance and reconnaissance missions evolve,” said Jeff Miller, L3's senior vice-president and president of its sensor systems business segment. “We have earned and maintained a very strong reputation for quality, performance, reliability and rapid delivery, having provided more than 4,100 MX surveillance and targeting systems worldwide.”

New platforms, new end-user countries

The demand for L3 WESCAM's ISR technologies continued to grow as systems were sold for the first time into four new countries across four separate continents, including Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.

Additionally, MX-Series systems were purchased for the first time on six significant airborne platforms, including airframes developed in Europe, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. L3 WESCAM turrets are now operating in over 70 countries on more than 190 different types of platforms across the air, land and maritime domains.

Continued growth for in-service support

L3 continued to experience a growing demand for in-service support contracts from MX customers located across North America, Europe and Asia. To keep operators and maintainers of MX systems operating at maximum efficiency, L3 WESCAM held a series of highly interactive customer conferences in Italy, France, Australia and Canada.

With over 230 MX operators and maintainers in attendance, L3 presented a series of technology sessions, gaining pivotal insight into each customer's direct experience with MX products and a better understanding of future surveillance and targeting requirements.

Complementing these customer-centric user groups, L3's global in-service support infrastructure, composed of 13 service centres staffed by a team of dedicated field service support personnel, continued to provide unmatched maintenance and repair solutions to customers who rely on L3's airborne, land and maritime imaging capabilities 24/7.

L3 WESCAM also conducted a series of new product demonstrations in the latter half of the year that were overwhelmingly successful, underscoring the company's commitment to anticipating customer needs and achieving the highest levels of performance possible. These trials will help to support future business opportunities moving into 2018 and beyond.

L3 WESCAM is a world leader in the design and manufacture of stabilized, multi-spectral imaging systems.

https://www.wescam.com/wp-content/uploads/Final_WESCAM_-second-half-2017-results.pdf

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    December 18, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, C4ISR

    Government of Canada announces contract awards aimed at improving space-based earth observation capabilities

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The combination of different types of remote sensing sensors on the same spacecraft has the potential to greatly enhance situational awareness capabilities especially with respect to maritime traffic monitoring. Title Project Arviq Supplier AstroCom Associates Inc. Location Ottawa, Ontario Project Type Study Federal contribution $165,000 (Total: $330,000) Project Arviq will investigate the feasibility of a proposed capability to detect ocean waves in sea ice. Arviq builds upon recent results that show centimetre-scale ice waves can be imaged directly using synthetic aperture radar interferometry technology. Title Multi-satellite data integration for operational ship detection, identification and tracking Supplier C-CORE Location St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador Project Type Study Federal contribution $775,000 (Total: $1,550,000) This study will investigate and develop a multi-satellite data classifying approach to enhance the capacity to discriminate ships from icebergs. Efficiently and rapidly classifying detected objects of interest in or over water is a key area of interest to the maritime domain situational awareness community. Title Modelling the geospatial intelligence capability to support Canadian surveillance and sovereignty Supplier C-CORE Location St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador Project Type Study Federal contribution $940,000 (Total: $1,880,000) This project will evaluate the spatio-temporal aspects of acquiring, downlinking and analyzing imagery for the generation of geographical intelligence products in support of land and maritime monitoring. It will investigate and develop a multi-satellite data classifier to better characterize ship and non-ship targets. Title Electro-Optic/Infrared data analytics for enhanced maritime surveillance Supplier Complex System Inc. 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It proposes to understand and demonstrate how Big Data analytics, in particular deep learning, can be applied to large archives of synthetic aperture radar imagery to extract relevant geospatial intelligence. Title Persistent multi-sensor land surveillance and change monitoring Supplier MDA Systems Ltd. Location Richmond, British Columbia Project Type Study Federal contribution $750,000 (Total: $1,500,000) This project will explore how wide-area automated change monitoring techniques can be enhanced by using a combination of earth observing data types such as RADARSAT and electro-optical data. The expected benefits include more persistent, more operational, all-weather monitoring capabilities combined with very high change classification accuracy. The project will leverage deep learning and exploit the availability of large satellite image archives. Title Architecture innovations for analytics-ready data Supplier UrtheCast Corp. Location Vancouver, British Columbia Project Type Study and prototype development Federal contribution $1,000,000 (Total: $2,000,000) This project will demonstrate scalable warehousing and on-demand processing of analytics-ready space remote sensing data from multiple types of earth obervation systems, to enable emerging techniques including artificial intelligence to be used for the production of geographical information products. Title Complementary sensor exploitation Supplier UrtheCast Corp. Location Vancouver, British Columbia Project Type Study and prototype development Federal contribution $499,000 (Total: $999,000) This project will develop, implement and demonstrate a new system to deliver thematic maps derived from complementary satellite earth observation data sources in support of CAF land operations. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2018/12/government-of-canada-announces-contract-awards-aimed-at-improving-space-based-earth-observation-capabilities.html

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