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Technology Stocks : KVH Industries, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sector Investor who wrote (1236)	6/3/2002 2:31:04 PM
From: geoffrey Wren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7249

Is that operating time or elapsed time? I would have thought they were talking about operating time. Even so, there is still a strong argument for more reliable gyros. If the mean time is, say, 5000 hours, then perhaps 20% fail during the useful life of the vehicle. It would be preferable to have a unit that would almost certainly outlive the tank, at least for initial installation or repairs. As for replacement of all existing gyros, that would be problematic, unless you are talking about the gyrs with a 600 hour failure time. Might as well replace them at leisure once, than wait for them to failure at an inopportune time. GTW

To: Sector Investor who wrote (1236)	6/3/2002 3:53:07 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7249

Of course it's operational hours, now that I reflect on it. Still, the principle holds. It looks like there are 8,800 M1s fas.org "If you don't maintain, you can't train!" call.army.mil More info fprado.com

To: Sector Investor who wrote (1236)	6/4/2002 1:31:12 AM
From: Michael Dunn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7249

Just as a point of reference: There have been several posts in the past which state the cost advantage of KVHI gyros. Part of this cost advantage is due to the fact that KVHI gyros are open loop, this means that there is no feedback used to monitor how much/if the gyro measurements drift. As a KVHI shareholder and an AF officer doing R&D I have an application requiring gryos or an IMU. The application is ground-to-space laser communication from a parked vehicle. I researched the specs of KVHI gyros and talked to the company. In short the open loop nature meant that the angular drift in the gyros was unacceptable for this application. Granted we aren't an application requiring huge numbers of gyros, but when considering the market for this product folks should keep in mind that for many military applications where ranges are long (>50 km) these gyros will be unacceptable. In todays world of "smart weapons" collateral damage gets alot of press and the associated political pressure. The open loop drift associated with these gyros may be unacceptable for many applications. Having the secretary of defense say "we got gyros for 1/3 the cost which decreases our weapons price by 3% so the 10% of the time that we miss the target and sometimes kill civilians is acceptable" would work fine 20 yrs ago but doesn't work in todays world. To KVHI's credit they advertise their gyros as having "tactical accuracy". For the initiated the translation for "tactical accuracy" is "only good for short ranges". As a result their gyros and IMUs will be unacceptable for many military applications. Something to keep in mind when folks guesstimate the market for these products. A KVHI long, Mike