Visionaries Land U.S. Navy Order

Downtown Rogers might be the last place “Q” of James Bond fame would look for military-grade spy gear to dole out to 007. But that’s where Vision Technologies Inc. has made its home as a frontline visionary in the war against terrorism.

The company makes virtually indestructible remote-controlled cameras, some of which can provide 360-degree surveillance on board airplanes, ships or tanks.

The cameras can also serve as scopes for weapons, so an attacker can be intercepted. The need for shipboard protection systems, or SPS, became evident in 2000 when a suicide attacker in a small boat blew a hole in the side of the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 crew members.

On Aug. 24, Vision Technologies landed a large government order as a subcontractor for Northrop Grumman Corp., a national defense contractor. Vision Technologies will supply cameras for the U.S. Navy’s SPS.

Lee Thompson, president and CEO of Vision Technologies, said agreements with Northrop Grumman prevented him from telling how much the contract is worth, how many of its J8 cameras will be ordered or how much each camera will cost. But estimates from one of the company’s investors put the contract’s value at “tens of millions” of dollars for somewhere between 370 and 700 cameras.

According to a March 15 report to the House Armed Services Committee, the Navy plans to spend $374 million on a total of 124 shipboard protection systems from 2006 through 2009. So an estimate for Vision Technologies to eventually bring in the tens of millions of dollars isn’t out of line.

Thompson did say that each boat would require at least three, and as many as six, cameras.

The company already makes some small cameras — about the size of a coffee cup — called box cameras for the Navy. Those are used for onboard surveillance in rooms to keep an eye out for leaks, fires or other ship-specific issues.

Northrop Grumman, a Los Angeles-based company, had $29.8 billion in revenue for 2004, up 13 percent from $26.3 million in 2003.

The Northrop Grumman Naval and Marine Systems division issued a press release stating it had received a $6.03 million contract for Phase I of the SPS, but Debbi McCallam, manager of communications for Northrop Grumman, said that amount was only for Phase I of the program. She couldn’t comment on behalf of the company about the possibility of landing contracts for future phases.

Landon Hutchens, spokesman for the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C., said the $374 million figure is an “authorized” amount, not necessarily an “appropriated” figure, but indications are that the program will proceed as planned, which includes another two phases that build upon Phase I.

Thompson said his company, which was founded in 1998, has yet to turn a profit for its 27 investors, but that it will be in the black by the end of the fourth quarter of 2005 and, he said, it will stay that way.

“Sales are going to be much better next year … We know we’ve got this contract and we’ve got a bunch of other contracts that we’re working on that, unless we really screw up, we know we’ll get,” he said.

The Vision

Thompson said there are parts of the SPS contract he can’t talk about at all due to security, but what he can talk about is the order for the J8 cameras.

The J8, a behemoth with two lenses — one 155mm infrared for night vision, and one 130mm electromechanical for day — is incased in housing built like an Abrams tank. It weighs between 120 pounds and 160 pounds, Thompson said.

The design target for the project is for the camera to withstand a g-force of 250. The average human passes out at a g-force of 6, Thompson said.

A g-force, the force of gravity, is a variable rate, depending on a body’s distance to the center of the Earth. But to simplify mathematical figuring it is frequently set at 32 feet per second. Another way to think of it is that at 250 “g”s, a 100-pound object really weighs 2,500 pounds.

The J8’s self-contained motor and gearbox that serves as the pan-and-tilt mechanism is so strong it can lift a 220-pound man off the ground.

But for all its ruggedness and sheer muscle, it’s still a delicate instrument.

“You have to be able to pan at .01 degree per second, which is like, you can’t even see it moving, but you have to be able to do that,” Thompson said of the project requirements.

Bill Bowen, vice president of engineering, said the pan-and-tilt, coupled with the company’s software, will replace gyrostabilizers that are typically used to keep instruments level on the sea. The two will compensate for yaw, pitch and roll, and still track a moving target, he said.

The camera is designed to track a target 2,000 yards away, or about 20 football fields. The information it sends to a central location can be used to identify the target as friendly or hostile, and target defense weapons as necessary.

Thompson declined to say how much each unit will cost the Navy.

“It’s a lot of money,” he said.

Target Market

Lee Thompson runs Vision Technologies with his son, Chuck Thompson, who is the firm’s vice president.

Lee Thompson personally developed about 25 of the patents for Vision Technologies. Most of his ideas were based on medical applications for rigid and flexible scopes that could be remotely controlled, but he maintained all the non-medical patent rights as the others were developed for a previous employer, Chuck Thompson said.

Chuck Thompson hit the streets to raise capital for the company in 1998 while his father was still under a contract with his previous employer, but Vision Technologies didn’t really produce anything until the following year, the pair said.

The initial aim of the company was to fill a niche as an aircraft maintenance firm.

Much like non-evasive surgery, a camera can be inserted behind a panel to check for needed repairs and the imagery can be sent via the Internet to a technician, Chuck Thompson said. The camera technique could speed up the process of elimination by mechanics not removing panels that don’t need to be removed, and by sending imagery to an off-site professional, sometimes eliminating a need for travel.

But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, foiled their plans. The airlines faced new regulations and tighter restrictions, so pending contracts were cancelled.

“We had to make a decision to try to continue to pursue the aircraft maintenance program or to focus on the Navy. And we chose to focus on the Navy because we saw that it was going to be the quickest way to revenue,” Lee Thompson said.

“Over the last four years, we’ve developed a really, really good working relationship with the military,” he said.

Rogers architect and developer Collins Haynes is on Vision Technologies’ board and has used the company’s cameras for the security system in his new office.

He and another investor are building the company a state-of-the-art 15,000-SF facility in Rogers.

Haynes became interested in Vision Technologies’ products because it leases space from him. He liked the products so much, he invested in the company about four years ago.

“It basically makes all other video systems obsolete,” Haynes said.

Vision Technologies employs 19 people, mostly engineering staff, and is looking to add another four to five engineers in the very near future, Lee Thompson said.

All together, the company has shipped only between 300 and 400 cameras since it started in 1998, he said. But those numbers will rise dramatically with the SPS contract and any military contracts that may follow.

The company has to deliver its first wave of cameras for the SPS contract sometime in mid-November, Lee Thompson said.