The objective of this CTMA effort is to provide the Army with automated test equipment which has the ability to replace the outdated manual test equipment presently used by government and industry. This capability will reduce cycle time for returned night vision devices and significantly reduce costs to the Department of Defense by decreasing destruction of good image intensifier tubes.
Some 10,000 tubes are returned annually from the field and are demilitarized (destroyed) due to a lack of retest verification. However, image intensifier tubes “classified for demil” in the field have subsequently successfully passed MIL-specs during reevaluations.
This automated equipment will be capable of rapidly performing all optical A-tests as required by government and industry for image intensifier tubes.
Implementation of an automated test capability will provide better test repeatability, reproducibility, and improve cycle time versus the present manual test equipment.
Potential customers and/or end users will be U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps depots, as well as image intensifier tube manufacturers.
For additional information contact-
NCMS Program Manager, Lee Patch, leep@ncms.org, 734-995-4972.
