SIGINT and ELINT upgrade contract for U.S. Air Force aircraft garnered by AMETEK Abaco
NewsMay 19, 2021
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. AMETEK Abaco Systems has won a design contract worth an initial value of $211,000 -- with a lifetime potential as much as $20 million -- with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) as part of an electronics intelligence (ELINT) and signal intelligence (SIGINT) capabilities upgrade for radio-frequency data intelligence gathering over a distributed fleet of USAF aircraft.
The terms of the contract include work on the AMETEK Abaco Systems VP460 6U VPX Direct RF Processing System and the SBC627 6U OpenVPX rugged single-board computer (SBC).
According to a release from the company announcing the win, the combination of the processor and SBC is the first solution to combine an RFSoC [radio-frequency system-on-chip] with powerful FPGA in a single-card design with high-speed back plane interconnect; the entire system, the company says, is also ruggedized to meet the environmental-performance requirements.
The VP460 and SBC627 upgrade the old systems, which recorded data for later analysis, to new technology enabling real-time processing of ELINT and SIGINT with the latest tech offerings, says Pete Thompson, VP of Product Management at Abaco Systems.
