Northrop Grumman Cobham Intercoms (NGCI), a joint venture between Northrop Grumman and Cobham, has been awarded the first production delivery order of the AN/VIC-5 enhanced vehicular communication system.

The announcement was made during a ceremony at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Aberdeen, Md., on Sept. 27. The U.S. Army PEO Enterprise Information Systems hosted the event to celebrate the decision for material release of the AN/VIC-5. This first production delivery order marks the official beginning of the program's production and deployment phase.

"AN/VIC-5 is the most advanced vehicular intercommunications system available to meet the demanding environment encountered by our soldiers," said Kay Burch, co-chair of the NGCI board of directors and vice president of Northrop Grumman's communications, intelligence and networking solutions business unit.

"We look forward to working with the Army to begin fielding this solution that defines a new standard for vehicular intercom systems."

AN/VIC-5 is an integrated intercom system that supports internet protocol communications to soldiers on the battlefield. It is the successor to AN/VIC-3, which has been proven in Iraq and Afghanistan on more than 100,000 U.S. ground vehicles.

NGCI holds a $2.4 billion indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract with the Army, awarded in 2009, for delivery of the system, which completed rigorous validation and verification testing earlier this year.

"We're excited to provide this enhanced capability to the warfighter and look forward to working with the Army to continue to evolve this product as future needs arise," said Daniel Gelston, co-chair of the NGCI board of directors and vice president of Cobham's Tactical Communications and Surveillance business unit.

AN/VIC-5 comprises a range of control consoles, operator stations, cables and headsets. The system's customizable, mix-and match, modular architecture scales to accommodate a number of platform requirements.

This intuitive, flexible approach allows users to combine system components to provide clear, noise-free communications between crew members inside and outside the combat vehicle to dismounted users and combat net radios.

Selecting from a variety of standard modules enables system scalability to support vehicle command post operations and tactical operations centers with up to 58 users and 16 combat net radios.