Honeywell Wins $499 Million in GPS, Equipment Defense Contracts

As reported by the Motley Fool: The Department of Defense issued $10.92 billion worth of new and amended defense contracts on Friday -- a mind-boggling 113 separate contract awards in all. Of these, defense contractor and industrial conglomerate Honeywell (NYSE: HON  ) won two -- of significantly different sizes.

Honeywell's big win of the day was a $485.4 million sole-source, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to integrate platforms, upgrade, and test the Air Force's Embedded Global Positioning System Inertial Navigation System, or EGI. Honeywell will also provide technical support post-integration, training, and engineering support and will provide spare parts and conduct repairs on the system through Sept. 26, 2018. EGI is described as a small, lightweight piece of electronics that uses a "state-of-the-art Ring Laser Gyro inertial navigation system" plus GPS signals to figure out an aircraft's "precise position."

Honeywell's other award of the day, considerably smaller, was a cost-plus-fixed-fee task order worth up to $13.5 million to support the Marine Expeditionary Unit Augmentation program -- a project that the USMC describes as an equipment "prepositioning program," storing heavy equipment close to places on the globe where Marines may be required to fight on short notice. This contract in particular deals with equipment being prepositioned in Kuwait and runs through Sept. 30, 2014.