I think such a deal won't be long in coming to fruition.

Given the amount of time that has passed since many of us first bought POET, it's easy to second guess the commitment the company has with BAE, and vice versa.

Many have wondered why BAE has never sung POET's praises publicly. Well, if they haven't negotiated a firm deal to use POET it wouldn't be very smart for BAE to talk about how great the tech is if Boeing or Raytheon had an equal shot at an exclusive deal. Best to keep quiet while their product is being developed.

Likewise, POET has a partially completed product which could very likely be their first POET design to make us some revenue. I'm sure POET, being the small fish in the pond at the moment, can't overtly shop POET around to other companies after BAE has committed this amount of time and effort without risking a backlash.

Some on this board are making it sound easy to make a deal at this stage and it's not. I do think that BAE and POET are committed to the IR detector, or either could have jumped ship at any time. This would have been especially true during the time when military funding was halted. It seems to me that both BAE and POET would have had to make concessions in order to continue developing their product once the funding dried up.

Again, this stage of negotiations isn't necessarily easy. BAE may want POET badly, and POET may be desperate for the validation a deal with BAE would bring (and the $$$). But neither company will simply bow to the other and take whatever they can get. Arriving at a deal may take time.

As a reminder, the Pellegrino report suggested that a deal following the requisite TRL would be struck between 2-18 months. I think most of us feel that the TRL will be met at MS7. Given that Boeing is interested in talking when the TRL is met and that BAE asked to have talks beginning 6 months prior to that, I feel that a deal would be struck closer to the 2 month mark as opposed to the 18 months.