COLUMBIA, Md., June 17 -- Essex Corp. has announced it will acquire Performance Group Inc. (PGI), a Fredericksburg, Va., provider of geographic information systems (GIS), imagery processing and analysis, spatial data development, environmental consulting, visualization and information technology services to government and private sector clients. Terms of the acquisition, expected to be completed within the next few weeks, were not disclosed. PGI, which has 39 employees, had an annual revenue of approximately $4.5 million in calendar year 2003; Essex said its GIS revenues in 2003 are estimated to have been $1.75 billion. "We are excited to have the management and staff of PGI join our growing family of professionals," said Leonard Moodispaw, CEO and president of Essex. "PGI is another excellent fit to our acquisition strategy. PGI's strong GIS experience and capabilities will help us move toward 3-D imaging solutions by integrating 3-D synthetic aperture radar images, produced with Essex technology, with industry-leading GIS systems. By linking these images within a GIS system to a common geographic grid, the images can be combined with a wide range of other information to answer a wide range of difficult questions for both our intelligence and defense and commercial customers." Essex, based in Columbia, Md., provides advanced optoelectronic and signal processing services and products for US government intelligence and defense customers and communications markets. For more information, visit: www.essexcorp.com