CONTACT:  Lynn O'Mara
                      Irvine Sensors Corporation
                      714-444-8718
                      lomara@irvine-sensors.com

     COSTA MESA, CALIFORNIA -- February 29, 2000 -- Irvine Sensors Corporation (NASDAQ: IRSN, Boston Stock Exchange: ISC) announced today that it has received an approximate $1 million research and development contract to demonstrate a superconducting digital router for high-speed communications. Under the contract, Irvine Sensors plans to exploit TRW's superconducting high speed switching technology to develop a "super switch" that could evolve with the communications industry's ever-increasing need for speed. The initial demonstration goal of the R&D contract is a 256 x 256 switch that can operate at a minimum of 10 Gigabits per second per channel and that can reconfigure in less than a nanosecond. If the full goals of the contract are met, this capability will be extended to a 4,096 x 4,096 switch with at least 40 Gigabits per second per channel. Irvine Sensors is in the process of organizing a consortium of potential industry users to assist in defining potential product requirements and benchmarking the planned switch's performance.
      "Conventional technology cannot handle the scalability requirements needed to support the ever increasing need for faster and faster data transmission rates," "said Dr. Volkan Ozguz, Irvine Sensors' Manager of Technology R&D. "TRW's superconducting technology addresses the power issues typically associated with high speed switches, while Irvine Sensors' chip-stacking enables the necessary electronics to be compressed into a space comparable to the size of an incoming fiber optics data cable."
      According to Daniel Berger, Irvine Sensors' Director of Advanced Technology Marketing, "The proliferation of information appliances is rapidly increasing data transmission requirements. Recent studies estimate that data traffic on the Internet alone is now doubling every 100 days. Competing Silicon Germanium and Gallium Arsenide technologies are already having a hard time keeping up and are very size and power intensive," Berger said, "Stacked superconducting electronics may be a means to overcome these limitations and enable continued rapid growth of Internet and telecommunications traffic."
      "The planned 'super switch' is a fall-out of the ultra-high-density, three-dimensional interconnect structures we have been developing in our ongoing Silicon Brain initiative," said John C. Carson, Irvine Sensors' Sr. Vice President and Chief Technical Officer. "We believe the potential applications of this interconnect structure to be widespread, and the opportunity to combine it with optical interconnect and superconducting technologies offers a challenging, but commercially compelling focus to demonstrate the capabilities of 3-D electronics."
      The new contract, administered by the U. S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, is a twenty-four month Phase II award under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The contract is being funded by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO).
      Irvine Sensors Corporation, headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, is primarily engaged in the development of high density electronics, miniaturized sensors and sensor readout circuits, miniature cameras, optical interconnections, image processing and recognition devices, and low-power analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits for diverse systems applications. It generally seeks to commercialize its technologies through independently financed and managed subsidiaries.

Except for historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this news release are forward-looking statements that are dependent on risks and uncertainties including such factors, among others, as the development risks inherent in new technology, the impact of competitive technologies and the pace at which new markets develop. Irvine Sensors does not undertake any obligation to publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Further information on Irvine Sensors Corporation is contained in publicly-filed disclosures available through the SEC's EDGAR database (www.sec.gov) or from the Company's Investor Relations.