Mercury's contract, valued at approximately $9 million, is part of the JCM program three-year System Design and Development (SDD) phase.

Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. defense contractor, was selected to develop and build a new JCM system, which Lockheed anticipates will result in the procurement of about 54,000 missiles from 2008 to 2018.

The JCM system is the next-generation air-to-ground missile to be carried on U.S. Armed Forces rotary- and fixed-wing platforms, replacing Longbow-Hellfire and Maverick, respectively.

"We are pleased with the high-performance COTS solution Mercury is developing to support the JCM program," said Steven Barnoske, JCM program director at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

"Mercury worked with Lockheed Martin to meet the challenge of our customer to deliver a high-performance, scalable and cost-effective missile system."

"Mercury's selection by Lockheed Martin for the JCM program is a milestone event," said Jay Bertelli, president and chief executive officer of Mercury Computer Systems.

"The adaptation of commercial technology for the JCM system demonstrates the ability of our engineering teams to develop solutions for high-volume, low-cost systems deployed in quantities much greater than the typical programs we support in defense electronics."

"It underscores Mercury's leadership as a top supplier of a full range of COTS computing technology and marks a new chapter in our valued relationship with Lockheed Martin."

"We believe Lockheed Martin's team won in part by demonstrating to the government a low-risk integrated solution. Mercury is proud to bring this cost-effective computing capability to Lockheed Martin's innovative team."

The Lockheed Martin JCM system includes a tri-mode seeker for diverse mission, multi-target capability from a variety of Army, Navy and Marine aircraft.

The seeker design includes imaging, infrared, semi-active laser and millimeter wave radar capabilities for active and passive "fire-and forget" and precision-strike targeting with minimal collateral damage, all-weather capability and robustness against enemy countermeasures.

Mercury's tactical field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based compute node (FCN) module, known as VantageRT FCN, provides the processing engine of the tri-mode seeker.

"Our JCM design reduces program risk and ensures future technology insertion by leveraging Mercury COTS technology," Barnoske said.

"Besides reducing time to a hardware solution, by adopting COTS, Lockheed Martin can leverage proven operating software and integrated development tools."

"For example, FPGA development is enhanced with Mercury's FCN Developers Kit (FDK) suite of development tools and services," Bertelli explained.

"The FDK contains off-the-shelf, ready-to-use components for managing input and output data flows and memory transfers in FPGA applications, reducing the time and risk involved in developing fully functional applications which exploit the power of FPGA and PowerPC computing."

Mercury and Lockheed Martin have collaborated on other programs including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), Portable Search and Target Acquisition Radar-Extended-Radar (PSTAR-ER), shipboard tactical imagery, and advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) programs.

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