USAF Awards Contract To Develop Survival Radio For Military Aircraft

South St. Paul, MN -- Digital Angel Corporation, an advanced technology company in the field of rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of high-value assets, announced that it has received notice that it has been selected for award of a contract by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to develop a new survival radio for military aircraft. The Company is expecting final contract documents to be processed in the near future. Digital Angel is one of two companies to win a contract to develop a new radio to replace the URT33, which is carried in aircrew survival packs and sets off a distress signal in an emergency. The URT33 will become obsolete when existing frequencies on 121.5 and 243 MHz cease to be monitored by Cospas-Sarsat on February 1, 2009.

The USAF funded development contract calls for Digital Angel to design, develop and build 20 operational radios within eight months. Following successful trials of the new radio systems, the USAF operational replacement program is expected to seek bids on a contract for about 15,000 radios.

Digital Angel President and Chief Executive Officer Kevin N. McGrath congratulated his team of engineers from the Company's OuterLink and Signature Industries subsidiaries for winning the contract. Lowell, MA-based OuterLink, which specializes in GPS location and real-time satellite communication systems for helicopters and aircraft, and London-based Signature Industries, which provides survival radios to more than 40 countries worldwide under the SARBE trade name, will combine to develop the replacement radio.

"This is an enormously important contract for us," McGrath said. "Despite the fact that we are one of the premier providers of military search and rescue beacons in the world, this is the first time we have penetrated the U.S. military market, the largest search and rescue beacon segment globally. This frequency change offers us a long anticipated opportunity to penetrate a market with new products made specifically to work with the new system. Once we finish the trial radios our plan is to aggressively pursue the full scale manufacturing contract as well as others from the U.S. armed forces."

SOURCE: Digital Angel Corporation