ITL Optronics will provide night-vision systems, weapons sights and advanced laser systems to IDF land forces in a deal worth NIS 30 million. The company will provide, amongst other things, "Mars" laser sights for the Tavor assault rifle and for other rifles. The company said this was the latest in a series of orders, including an NIS 8 million order by the army of a European NATO country for night-vision systems.
ITL CEO Eli Venezia says that the equipment delivery was accelerated because of the war, and that the company is working three shifts in order to supply the entire order to the IDF within two months. The first part of the order will be delivered in 10 days. According to Venezia the additional night-vision systems and weapons sights will afford infantrymen much better vision at night.
The night-vision systems will be provided to regular infantry units as well as special forces. Venezia said that priorities had been changed within the company in order to meet the deadlines. He believes that one of the lessons of the Lebanese war will be to equip the infantry with additional command & control systems and night-vision.
Venezia was appointed CEO of ITL after parent company Mikal, which holds the majority stake, purchased part of the shares held by the previous CEO Amichai Robb and CFO David Lucatz.
Venezia said that he joined the company after it had run into problems and that his objective was to improve the sales and profit. His vision is to transform ITL into a company specializing in infantry. He believes that the future of infantry will be given priority by western militaries and the IDF. He states that the previous way of thinking, which had been developed in the US Army, was that each infantryman would be equipped with state of the art advanced technologies and that ITL had a different perspective. "We will enhance the development of new systems for infantry and the tailoring of technologies to the new approach to combat," he said. "We are leading an approach of decentralization of the systems. Each function in the infantry unit will have independent capabilities and when all of the systems are networked, the result will be a stronger infantry combat system."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on August 17, 2006
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