I've been researching the importance of KVH's recent win for armored vehicles. In particular, the "order of magnitude" reliability improvements. This could be a MAJOR win for KVH.
Here is what KVH said in their recent P/R
<<AS A FORM, FIT AND FUNCTION REPLACEMENT for mechanical gyros, the E-Core 4000 gyro offers a mean-time- between-failure (MTBF) rate of 65,000 hours, an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE greater than that of mechanical gyros. THIS TREMENDOUS MTBF IMPROVEMENT ENSURES THAT VEHICLES REMAIN COMBAT-CAPABLE and significantly reduces the product costs over each vehicle's lifetime." >>
Here is what I found on the MTBF (mean time before failure) for Ring-Laser Gyros.
<<A modern strapdown RLG I.N. has an MTBF of 5000-10000 hours. The most recently designed gimballed I.N.s (designed 10-12 years ago) have MTBFs of around 600 hours, with about ten times the number of electronic components.>>
Some interesting pictures of RLGs here too.
marconi.com
There are over 8,700 hours in one year, which means the older gyros fail every 8-10 months. That has to translate into one heck of a down time problem. There are at least 7,500 M1 Abrams tanks in existance, maybe a lot more, as I heard somewhere there are about 100,000 allied tanks in the world, not counting all the lighter armored vehicles.
With these numbers, a sizeable percentage has to be down at any time. Does anyone know how to calculate this? The military has to be replacing gyros in tanks at a rate of about 700 per month JUST TO KEEP THE FLEET GOING.
207.234.171.161
Since a tank that can't shoot while moving is dead meat with today's technology, the gyros are an essential part. The recent win could be huge. If just the US upgraded their gyros instead of replacing them they could save a bundle in future maintenance costs.
This has to be over a $400 million opportunity world-wide if all the gyros are single axis, but the P/R said newer armored vehicles use two-axis gyros. |
