Boston, MA-August 8, 1995- Teradyne, Inc. has received a $43 million contract from prime contractor Lockheed Martin, Information Systems (Orlando, FL) to supply M900 VXI Digital Test Subsystems for the Lots V, VI, and VII production releases of the Consolidated Automated Support System (CASS). CASS is the US Navy's standard test equpment for fleet and depot maintenance of avionics and weapons systems.

The contract was awarded after approval in December, 1994, by the NAVAIR Configuration Control Board of a Value Engineering Change Proposal to upgrade the 20/40-MHz Teradyne digital test unit (DTU) in the first four production lots of CASS to Teradyne's new VXI Digital Test Subsystem. Prior to authorizing the change, NAVAIR evaluated the CASS program benefits of the VXI digital test subsystem, which include higher performance, lower cost, reduced asset size to allow room for future technology insertion, increased mean time between failure (MTBF), maintainability, and test program set (TPS) transportability.

Teradyne's new M900 satisfied all of these requirements, including a greater than 50% reduction in rack space requirements as a result of state-of-the-art electronics design and VXI packaging. The M900 provides an increase in digital test data rates from 20/40 MHz to 50 MHz. The CASS configuration will have 384 digital channels (up from 336 in the original DTU). Channel capacity is field-upgradeable to 512.

The M900 maintains forward TPS compatibility with the original CASS DTU, as well as backward compatibility providing that the new VXI subsystem's performance enhancements are not employed. This means that a TPS can be maintained on any CASS station regardless of whether the original program was developed using the original or new digital test subsystem.

Lockheed Martin was awarded the initial CASS contract by the US Navy in 1986. Since then they have delivered 15 Full Scale Engineering Development (FSED) systems and 185 production CASS systems. 145 systems have been installed at 38 different contractor sites and bases, including eight aircraft carriers. Of the nearly 2400 TPSs targeted for CASS through the year 2000, 459 have already been delivered or are in development. The goal of the CASS program is to streamline board-level and system-level testing on Navy aircraft carriers and in Navy repair depots by replacing spacialized test systems with a single, modular test system architecture that is more cost-effective to deploy, implement, and maintain.

Teradyne was originally selected to supply digital test units for CASS in an agreement announced in February, 1989.

Boston-based Teradyne, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of automatic test equipment and connection systems. The company's Assembly Test Group in Boston is the world's leading supplier of commercial-off-the-shelf test equipment for military applications. Teradyne sales for the quarter ending July 2, 1995, were $256 million.