Kearfott is a defense equipment manufacturer founded in 1918 in

New Jersey, United States New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware R ...

. It is based in Woodland Park. Today the electronics division is part of

BAE Systems BAE Systems plc (BAE) is a British multinational arms, security, and aerospace company based in London, England. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe, and ranked the seventh-largest in the world based on applicable 2021 revenues. ...

, while the remaining Kearfott Guidance & Navigation division is a subsidiary of the

Astronautics Corporation of America Astronautics Corporation of America (ACA) was established in 1959 and is a US supplier, designer, and manufacturer of avionics equipment to airlines, governments, commercial and defense aircraft manufacturers, and other avionics systems integrator ...

. It also has locations in Black Mountain, North Carolina and Matamoras, Mexico.

History

Kearfott Corporation was founded in 1918 by William Dunham Kearfott. It became the Kearfott Division of the

General Precision Equipment Corporation The General Precision Equipment Corporation was a major manufacturing company involved in the defense and space industries as well educational products and control devices for consumer goods. General Precision, Inc., was the principal operating sub ...

in 1955 and then, in 1968, the Kearfott Division of Singer Business Corporation. In 1987 Singer split Kearfott; the Kearfott Guidance & Navigation division was sold to the

in 1988, and the Electronic Systems Division was purchased by

Plessey The Plessey Company plc was a British electronics, defence and telecommunications company. It originated in 1917, growing and diversifying into electronics. It expanded after World War II by acquisition of companies and formed overseas compani ...

. In 1990 GEC-Marconi bought Plessey and renamed the unit in

Wayne, New Jersey Wayne is a Township (New Jersey), township in Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. Home to William Paterson University and located less than from Midtown Manhattan, the township is a bedroom suburb of New York ...

GEC-Marconi Electronic Systems. Kearfott Guidance & Navigation Corporation officially changed its name to Kearfott Corporation effective June 1, 2008, reflecting the fact that the scope of the company's business was not limited to guidance and navigation products.

Projects

Among the many vehicles and devices that contain a Kearfott built Inertial Navigation Unit (INU), is the Northrop-built Global Hawk. The KN-4072 and the KN-4074 are the preferred MRLG (Monolithic Ring Laser Gyro) units for Northrop's Global Hawk. The KN-4072a and the KN-4074 are based upon the KN-4071 design series, with a few key differences, most noticeably their enclosures and interfaces. Kearfott built the

inertial navigation system An inertial navigation system (INS) is a navigation device that uses motion sensors (accelerometers), rotation sensors ( gyroscopes) and a computer to continuously calculate by dead reckoning the position, the orientation, and the velocity (dire ...

for the

Pershing II The Pershing II Weapon System was a solid-fueled two-stage medium-range ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the Pershing 1a Field Artillery Missile System as the United States Army's primary nuclear-capable thea ...

missile. Kearfott integrating gyroscopes (P/N C702519018-4) were used in the rate gyros for the Apollo Telescope Mount / Orbital Workshop (aka Skylab).

References

External links

*
www.astronautics.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kearfott Guidance and Navigation Technology companies established in 1918 Companies based in Passaic County, New Jersey Companies based in North Carolina 1918 establishments in New Jersey