Primagraphics wins major contract to supply U.S. Navy with radar equipment for aircraft carrier fleet

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, May 26, 2003

Primagraphics has been awarded a major contract by the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWC-AD), the U.S. Navy's full spectrum research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and fleet support center, based in Maryland, USA.

Primagraphics will be supplying its commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment for use on board the U.S. Navy's CV and CVN-class aircraft carriers and LHA and LHD-class amphibious landing platforms. The equipment will be integrated by NAWC-AD into the U.S. Navy's air traffic control consoles, which are used for control of rotor and fixed wing aircraft during launch/recovery and amphibious assault operations.

Engineers at NAWC-AD's St. Inigoes facility in Maryland needed a VME-based ultra-high resolution (2048 x 2048 pixel) graphics display controller to generate combined graphics, radar and video displays on the 2k x 2k flat panel displays used on board the ships. They also required 2k radar scan conversion and radar acquisition capability. Primagraphics was able to provide the solution.

Primagraphics hardware will include the Virgo radar acquisition card, the 2k Vantage radar scan-converter and the 2k Tiger graphics display controller. Primagraphics is the only company worldwide to offer 2k graphics on a VME platform.

David Johnson, product manager at Primagraphics, said: "We are excited to be supplying the U.S. Navy with integrated graphics and radar scan-conversion hardware to support this display application. Our commitment to open architectures has enabled our customers to incorporate software and hardware components from multiple vendors using standard interfaces and minimizing custom development."

Primagraphics is a leader in the development of processing and display systems for military and civil applications. Its systems, for VME, PCI, CompactPCI and PMC formats, are in use throughout the world for airborne and shipborne command and control consoles, vessel tracking, air traffic control and air defense systems.