Lockheed Martin selects Barco for U.S. Navy’s next-gen console displays
Barco's new RFD-357 flat panel display meets Navy's demanding TI 10 specs for ruggedness, image quality, and versatility
Duluth, Ga., — 2 May 2010 Visualization pioneer Barco announced today that Lockheed Martin Mission Systems & Sensors, Manassas,Va., has selected the Barco RFD-357 flat panel display for inclusion in its next-generation control consoles for U.S. Navy submarine retrofits. The initial contract for 700 displays is in response to the Navy's Tech Insertion program that upgrades selected groups of vessels every two years on an on-going basis.
The new RFD-357 display satisfies the Navy's challenging requirements for a high-resolution, rugged, and versatile display that functions with the utmost reliability in surface or sub-surface ships. “Lockheed Martin was looking for image quality, ruggedness, and versatility,” said Ron Farine, Barco VP of Sales for Barco Federal Systems. “Barco is a 'star provider' for Lockheed Martin and we've delivered over 5,000 displays to them. They have the confidence that Barco can develop this new display and bring it to market as a best of breed product. And that's indeed been the case with the RFD-357,” Farine added.
The RFD-357 can accept and display input signals from disparate sources such as radar, sonar, full motion video, infrared imagers, and satellite feeds. The display's high resolution 1920 x 1200 pixel display is an active matrix liquid crystal display utilizing Barco's proprietary backlight diffuser for uniform corner-to-corner image quality. The display runs in a full 10 bit mode that increases the color gamut from the standard 16 million displayable colors to over 1 billion displayable colors. The result is image quality of unsurpassed clarity and color depth. And at 22.5 inches diagonally, the RFD-357 brings this performance level to a large area display for the first time.
In a sealed environment like a submarine control room, excessive heat from electronic components can be especially damaging. To overcome this potential problem, the RFD-357 incorporates Barco's intelligent thermal management system that radiates heat off the back of the display for efficient dissipation within the console housing. For best-of-breed reliability, the RFD-357 was designed to conform to MIL-S-901D, Grade A shock requirements for surface and sub-surface naval applications – the toughest naval shock specification in the world.
“Combining superior image quality with a thin, rugged design, the RFD-357 meets the requirements of military vessels – today and tomorrow”, commented Lieven Claeys, Barco's Market Director for Naval. “The careful selection of components allows Barco to guarantee a long term support of up to 7 years without any product changes. Optionally, the display comes with high-performance touch screen functionality, allowing fluent drag and drop actions operated with any available stylus device. All this makes the RFD-357 the perfect choice for future proof naval applications.”
The RFD-357 will be premiered to the public at the Barco booth at Sea Air Space 2010.
About Barco
Barco, a global technology company, designs and develops visualization products for a variety of selected professional markets. Barco has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco (NYSE Euronext Brussels: BAR) is active in more than 90 countries with about 3300 employees worldwide.
