Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/9126-comtech-receives-27-5-m-blue-force-tracking-contract

Comtech Receives $27.5 M Blue Force Tracking Contract

February 26, 2010

Comtech Telecommunications Corp. announced that its Maryland-based subsidiary, Comtech Mobile Datacom Corp., received a $27.5 M ceiling increase to its Blue Force Tracking ("BFT-1") program contract with the US Army. The total contract ceiling for its current BFT contract is now $243.5 M and expires December 2011.

Since the BFT contract was previously near its ceiling limit, the ceiling increase enables Comtech to continue to provide uninterrupted satellite airtime capacity as well as communications equipment and network management services, and related support for FBCB2-BFT, a battle command real-time situational awareness command and control system.

Fred Kornberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Comtech Telecommunications Corp., said, "We are extremely pleased to receive this BFT contract ceiling increase and we are encouraged that there will be future contract ceiling increases under our existing BFT contract to continue to provide a full spectrum of equipment and satellite airtime and services required to meet the BFT program's needs. We believe this action demonstrates the critical role that our BFT technology plays within the Department of Defense's logistics and war fighter communities."

Kornberg added, "We continue to respond to the US Army's competitive BFT-2 proposal process and believe that our BFT-2 solution provides the US Army a unique ability to seamlessly transition from our current BFT-1 solution to our BFT-2 solution by offering a staged upgrade cycle that eliminates the risk of network disruption while minimizing the costs of operating two different networks during a challenging budget environment."

Comtech's BFT-2 solution has been tested and is ready for field deployment and specifically addresses the US Army warfighters' challenging mobile environment. Comtech's BFT-2 solution integrates leading edge antenna, signal processing and waveform technologies while at the same time providing full backward compatibility with the more than 100,000 first generation Comtech-designed BFT-1 satellite transceivers previously deployed.