L-3 Awarded Multi-Million Dollar MUE Program Option for GPS Receiver Enhancements

L-3's highly compatible GPS technology will reduce overall program costs

(New York, December 17, 2007) -- L-3 Communications (NYSE: LLL) announced today that it has been awarded a $33 million option on an existing contract with the United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), to develop standard cards for the Air Force's Modernized User Equipment (MUE) Program.


The MUE program is aimed at funding the design and development of new GPS receiver technology for the support of future military GPS requirements. To date, L-3 has been awarded $74 million under this contract. The total potential contract value for L-3, including future options, is $90.6 million.

With the exercise of this option, L-3 will build and qualify two state-of-the-art GPS receiver enhancements. The first will be a Ground Based GPS Receiver Application Module with a Modernized Standard Serial Interface (GB-GRAM-M SSI). The second will be a GPS Receiver Application Module Type S (GRAM-SEM-E/M) card.

"L-3's miniaturized modules are technically very sophisticated, and are a result of the innovation and dedication of our GPS engineering team," said Robert Huffman, President of L-3 Interstate Electronics Corporation. "Achieving efficient price performance has been a cooperative effort between L-3 and the Air Force. The development of these modules will have a significant impact, lowering total ownership costs on many military programs."

These new modernized modules are standard and backward compatible, making them useable in many GPS receiver applications. In most cases, this will eliminate the cost of developing new modules for each individual application. The modules will be incorporated into L-3's new line of MUE GPS receivers. This new line utilizes a single System on Chip (SoC) application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), which integrates the Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM) and GPS P/Y and C/A functions plus the military M-Code signal tracking algorithms in a single, low-cost unit. Use of a single ASIC will result in significant production efficiencies and provide the flexibility to economically offer receiver solutions for a broad range of military applications, including gun-fired projectiles, aircraft avionics and hand-held GPS data units. L-3's product architecture will also allow the production of receivers and higher-level systems to be accomplished in unclassified production facilities, further lowering the final system cost.

Source : L-3 Communications