21st Century Systems, Inc. Wins Navy/OSD Contract for fuel management & efficiency
21st Century Systems, Inc. announced that work will begin on a Phase I SBIR Navy/OSD contract "Vehicle Intelligent Performance Enabled Retrofit" (VIPER) for the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The VIPER project is designed to use "commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)" technology where possible to provide after-market real-time capability to determine the health and readiness of tactical and non-tactical vehicles so as to maintain maximum fuel economy and readiness among a military unit/force that is located over a large geographical area. Vehicle embedded sensors, monitors and processors will offer advice to the operator, while an off-board system will collect the information to provide maintenance related prognostics and logistics reports. The proposed system will enable all levels of military operations (from small-unit commanders to Theater-Level logistics planners) to use and allocate fuel resources more effectively. The initial customers are the US Army and the USMC. 21CSI plans to build and transition the key technological elements to suitable vehicles as quickly as possible. VIPER is being designed around commonly used vehicles in order to reduce the transition time.
