DRS Technologies Receives New Order to Provide Deployable Flight Recorders for Royal Australian...

Business Editors

PARSIPPANY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr. 18, 2002

TECHNOLOGY CAN BE USED ON COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT

DRS Technologies, Inc. (AMEX: DRS), the world leader in deployable flight recorders for international military and civil aircraft, announced today that it

The recorders will be installed throughout the entire medium- and heavy-lift helicopter fleets of the Royal Australian Navy.

For the new $2.1 million award, DRS will provide over 30 EAS3000 deployable cockpit voice and flight data recording systems for the Royal Australian Navy's Sea King SK-50, -50A and -50B and Sea Hawk S-70B-2 helicopters. The systems will include DRS's latest Aircraft Monitoring Unit technology, which constantly monitors the performance and condition of the aircraft's operational systems, including engines, avionics, and dynamic and structural components. The award was received from Raytheon Australia Pty. Ltd., a unit of Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), located in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Work associated with this award will be accomplished by the company's DRS Flight Safety and Communications unit in Carleton Place, Ontario, Canada. Deliveries of the EAS3000 systems are expected to be completed by the end of 2002. Under separate contracts awarded previously, the Royal Australian Navy also installed DRS's EAS3000 systems on its SH-2G Super Seasprite helicopters.

"The EAS3000 is the world's most advanced deployable flight recorder for rotary-wing aircraft," said Mark S. Newman, DRS Technologies' chairman, president and chief executive officer. "This new order reinforces our position as the global leader in this technology and underscores international customer confidence in these systems. These systems separate from the aircraft at the time of an incident, escaping the devastating effects of a crash. They also float indefinitely in water. Widespread use of these unique systems for commercial aircraft could save millions of dollars in recovery efforts and expedite search and rescue missions. These products are the most advanced combination of flight data recorder and emergency locator beacon system available today. Following the success of similar systems for fixed-wing applications, DRS is fast becoming recognized as the global flight safety system supplier of choice for both military and civil aviation requirements."

The EAS3000 is a modular, deployable beacon system that incorporates advanced data storage technology in a single crash-hardened unit developed specifically for use on military and commercial helicopters. Designed, qualified and certified to the requirements and standards of the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Transport Canada Airworthiness (TCA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE), the EAS3000 integrates a cockpit voice and flight data recorder with a crash-survivable emergency locator beacon for fast recovery of flight data and an increased success rate for search and rescue teams. The recovered data, which provide detailed information of the events during an incident, are utilized for accident investigation, training, aircraft and avionics design and manufacture, and flight safety procedure development.

For over 30 years, DRS has delivered more than 4,000 similar deployable emergency avionics systems to international fixed-wing and helicopter platforms, including the U.S. E-4 and U.S. Navy F/A-18C/D and -18E/F Super Hornet aircraft, Canada's CP-140 Aurora aircraft and Cormorant Search/Rescue helicopters, the United Kingdom's Royal Navy EH-101 Merlin and Royal Air Force Support helicopters, Italy's MMI (Marina Militare Italiana) helicopters and Tokyo's Metropolitan Police helicopters, among others. The recovery rate of DRS's deployable systems exceeds 95 percent of reported incidents. The retrieval rate of data in recovered systems has been 100 percent, far exceeding the recovery and data retrieval rate of commercial flight recorders currently in use.

DRS Technologies provides leading edge products and services to government and commercial customers worldwide. Focused on defense electronics, the company develops and manufactures a broad range of mission critical systems and components in the areas of communications, combat systems, rugged computers, electro-optics, data storage, digital imaging, flight safety and space.

For more information about DRS Technologies, please visit the company's web site at www.drs.com.