Shortsighted: Dogged by slow deliveries, U.S. launches fresh goggle competition

摘要

Five years ago, the U.S. Army was in a hurry to deliver a new type of helmet-mounted night-vision monocle to soldiers in the field- one that would combine light-amplified and thermal images in one view. So it asked ITT Corp., its contractor for the monocles, to skip the final step of its design process and go immediately to production. "In hindsight, that was probably a mistake," said Don Morello, director of U.S. military marketing for ITT. In that last step, a contractor normally makes a "deep-dive" examination of plans to manufacture the item to be delivered, Morello said. Had ITT taken that deep dive, it might have uncovered the arduous assembly process and pre-shipment performance tests that have left the Army with a small fraction of the AN/PSQ-20 Enhanced Night Vision Goggles (ENVGs) it hoped to have in the field by now. The Army planned to receive 40,000 ENVGs by the time the ITT contract ends this year, but it has received fewer than 2,000 of the dollar13,000 goggles. (ITT said it has delivered about 1,800; the Army said it has received about 1,500.) ITT said it has "recently resumed normal production of the ENVG" after incorporating design updates.