Kauai missile
site contract
awarded

A Massachusetts company
wins the $9.7 million pact

Star-Bulletin staff

A company in Wilmington, Mass., has been awarded a three year Navy contract worth $9.7 million to design and build tracking systems for Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, Kauai.

The equipment will support the Navy's missile defense programs.

Textron Systems, a subsidiary of Textron Inc.,will create two trackers, called "large-aperture electro-optical systems," capable of tracking missiles launched from land or sea.

Textron Systems is experienced in similar work in Hawaii. For more than 30 years, the company has worked with the Air Force at the Maui Space Surveillance Site on Haleakala, integrating electro-optical sensors with telescopes and tracking systems.

The company said the Kauai project will benefit from the expertise it developed on Maui, where the systems support the Air Force space surveillance mission for tracking and imaging space objects. They also monitor missile launches. The systems to be built on Kauai will gather and analyze data to support Navy ballistic missile defense programs.

Textron Systems supplies advanced systems and components for defense, aerospace, automotive and industrial applications.

Parent company Textron Inc., with about $10 billion in annual revenues, is a worldwide company with operations in the aircraft, automotive, industrial and finance sectors.