DRS Technologies receives $4 million US Navy contract

FEBRUARY 20--DRS Technologies Inc. (Parsippany, NJ; www.drs.com) has received a contract to design and develop state-of-the-art active and passive infrared sensing systems for the Vertical Integrated Sensor Arrays (VISA) program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Microsystems Technology Office, for future advanced military and space surveillance applications. The program will focus on massively parallel signal processing in focal-plane-array (FPA) technology, considered necessary to address future strategic and tactical system needs of multifunction active and passive thermal imaging and laser jamming avoidance not addressed with current FPA technology.

The contract, valued at $10.5 million including options, was awarded to DRS by the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego (San Diego, CA). For the initial $4 million award, the company's DRS Infrared Technologies unit in Dallas, TX, will lead the effort to develop processes and circuit concepts and demonstrate prototype infrared VISA FPAs for Department of Defense military applications. The company's DRS Sensors & Targeting Systems in Anaheim, CA, also will contribute to the effort.

The initial award has a duration of 18 months. For this award, DRS Infrared Technologies will develop techniques to stack and interconnect multiple silicon wafers to form massively parallel electrical connections between wafer layers. The approach will be based on experience in thinning, laminating, and interconnecting infrared materials to silicon signal processors implementing the company's high-density vertically integrated photodiode infrared detector technology. DRS Sensors & Targeting Systems will design and develop a process to cut high-aspect ratio holes in silicon wafers containing FPA read out integrated circuits (ROICs) and electrically interconnect multiple ROIC layers using thin film metalization techniques.