Display modules for the U.S. Army's Thermal Weapon Sight program are being urgently produced by Kopin Corporation.

The urgent order is the result of a product chosen earlier for the program not having met stringent military specifications, the company said.

"Dismounted soldier environments such as TWS are the harshest environments for any product to endure," said Michael Presz, Kopin's vice president of government programs. "We were informed that reliability issues were discovered with the alternative display technology during extensive testing. Our unique AMLCD technology, however, has demonstrated proven performance and reliability for the TWS program in over 15 years of deployment."

The contract is worth $9 million and is for immediate delivery of urgent new order calls for the immediate delivery of Kopin's VGA-resolution display modules. The period of performance is nine months but with options that could continue into next year, raising the contract value to $13 million.

Kopin in the past has delivered some 200,000 display units -- in component form, in a display module or as a complete eyepiece assembly -- for the TWS program in the past.

"Our overlay display systems for smart weapon sights can deliver brightness in excess of 5,000 ft-Lambert (or about 17,000 nits) for bright daytime use or very low brightness of 0.01 ft-Lambert for totally dark environments," said Kopin President and CEO Dr. John C. Fan. "This ultra-high brightness display system, including the symbology generator, consumes only 200 mW displaying overlay symbology at 3,000 ft-Lambert brightness, which no other imaging system in the world can match.

"We expect our proprietary display technology to continue improving and breaking performance barriers, which will benefit both the wearable and military applications."