18 Aug 03. BAE Systems’ Underwater Systems division has secured a contract worth £1.2m with the U.K. MoD to supply the Royal Navy with 11 Versatile Exercise Mine Systems (VEMS). VEMS is a training and assessment tool for mine counter measures. It is designed to simulate the fire-control mechanisms of known and perceived threat mines, giving confidence to the Mine Counter Measures (MCM) forces to operate effectively and with minimum risk. This order is for two VEMS products -MkII and Type S. VEM MkII are designed to tackle the deep-water scenario and simulate mines that target capital ships.

15 Aug 03. Saab Bofors Dynamics has now received an order from MBDA for development and production of the proximity fuse, as a result of its involvement, announced iin January 2003, in the METEO European air-to-air missile project. The order is worth in the region of MSEK 450 with options for further series production.

19 Aug 03. Northrop Grumman Corporation’s (NYSE:NOC – News) Information Technology (IT) sector will help provide U.S. Army commanders with enhanced digital battlefield maps under a new topographic information contract with the Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Topographic Engineering Center, a Corps of Engineer R&D laboratory, Alexandria, Va. The Combat Terrain Information Systems (CTIS) Systems Engineering and Integration program is an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract with the potential value of $100m over 10 years. Northrop Grumman IT expects an initial award of approximately $7m for the first year.

08 Aug 03. Raytheon Co. received a $121.8m contract from Lockheed Martin Corp. for lot 3 and lot 4 common integrated processors for the F/A-22 fighter program. The contract, which is part of the completed negotiations for lots 1 to 4, represents 42 ship-sets of the hardware, which consists of replaceable modules and multichip modules. Contract work is expected to be done by the end of 2006.