Fidelity Technologies Corp. (Fidelity) of Reading, Pa. announced today it received a $310,000 military contract to build 3,000 surface wire grounding kits for the U.S. Army’s Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) at Fort Monmouth, Eatontown, N.J.
CECOM issued the award to Fidelity as a five-year Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. “We anticipate receiving more production orders over the next five years under this contract”, said Fidelity General Manager, Charles Gulati.
“Grounding kits are essential to soldiers, as they provide ‘earth-ground’, which facilitates better communications and sensor performance by reducing interference and distortion,” Gulati said. “Also, these kits provide significantly improved lightning strike survivability.”
Grounding kits, also known as MK-2551 A/U, are bagged kits comprising grounding wires, stakes and hammers. They are used with fielded mobile communications systems during high mobility operations.
Grounding wires are threaded through stakes, which are hammered into the ground around a sheltered communications system, usually housed in a military vehicle. A benefit of these kits is they are easily installed and removed, providing a better option for war fighters in situations where driving and retracting conventional ground rods would be difficult and time consuming.
Resistance to ground is based on the ability of the earth electrode, or the surface wire stake or ground rod, to transfer the current to the bulk of the earth surrounding it. The grounding kits Fidelity manufactures provide a path to the ground with significantly lower resistance.
This is the second time Fidelity has won this contract; the first was in 2001.
Fidelity produces all elements of the kit, including bagging and tagging for delivery to the U.S. Army.