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Kopin Receives $9Million Order for Thermal Weapon Sight Program

Date Announced: 23 Jun 2014

Options Could Increase the Order to $13Million.

WESTBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kopin® Corporation (KOPN), the largest U.S. developer of display systems for wearable technologies and military applications, today announced it has received a $9Million order for display modules in support of the U.S. Army’s Thermal Weapon Sight (TWS) program.

This urgent order was placed by a major customer to replace a competing display technology which was not able to meet the stringent military specifications. As a result of this new order, we expect our revenue for 2014 will be in the range of $24Million to $28Million, an increase of $6Million from the earlier projection.

“Dismounted soldier environments such as TWS are the harshest environments for any product to endure,” stated Michael Presz, the Company’s Vice President of Government Programs. “We were informed that reliability issues were discovered with the alternative display technology during extensive testing.

"Our unique AMLCD technology, however, has demonstrated proven performance and reliability for the TWS program in over 15 years of deployment. Kopin has delivered more than 200,000 display units to the TWS program, either in component form, in a display module or as a complete eyepiece assembly, with essentially zero product returns.”

This urgent new order calls for the immediate delivery of Kopin’s VGA-resolution display modules, with continued production over the next 9 months. The customer has requested additional options which could continue production well into 2015 and increase the order to over $13 million if fully exercised.

“In addition to wearable technology, our defense business, based on very related technology, continues to be an important element of our overall mobile system strategy,” said Kopin President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. John C. C. Fan. “With our great success in the TWS program, we have now recorded over $300Million in total revenues from the defense sector.

"We believe the future in defense is tied to the development of the next-generation weapon sight technology. Kopin’s smart weapon sight system, consisting of Kopin’s ultra-high-brightness overlay display, Kopin’s see-through optics and symbology generator together with a laser-range-finder and ballistic calculator, provides critical targeting information to soldiers, day or night, through the use of augmented reality overlaid in a direct-view optical scope.

"We believe this patent-pending smart weapon sight, which can be installed on millions of existing commercial and military weapon sights worldwide, represents a game changer and an even bigger revenue opportunity for our defense business.”

“Our overlay display systems for smart weapon sights can deliver brightness in excess of 5,000 ft-Lambert (or about 17,000 nits) for bright daytime use or very low brightness of 0.01 ft-Lambert for totally dark environments,” continued Dr. Fan. “This ultra-high brightness display system including the symbology generator consumes only 200 mW displaying overlay symbology at 3,000 ft-Lambert (about 10,000 nits) brightness, which no other imaging system in the world can match. We expect our proprietary display technology to continue improving and breaking performance barriers, which will benefit both the wearable and military applications.”

Source: Kopin

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