CONTRACT NEWS IN BRIEF

EUROPE

LAND

14 Aug 07. L-3 Communications announced that its Integrated Systems (L-3 IS) subsidiary has been selected as one of two preferred bidders in the Assessment Phase of Project LISTENER for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence. The Assessment Phase is a $2m, 10-month engineering effort for risk reduction and solution definition. Main Gate for the project is scheduled for 2009. (Source: ASD Network)

Jul 07. UK MoD has awarded the GIRA 4D Cube Research Project to TENET Technology Ltd. This three year research project seeks to establish a defence wide geospatial and environmental information model intended to support future GEOINT delivery, allowing all defence systems and users to access integrated, coherent, complete and up-to-date geospatial information. UK MoD recognises the need to unify geospatial information provision. While the major goal of the project is to come up with a new, innovative and well thought out abstract model designed specifically for defence needs, the research will aim to exploit the benefits of the evolving standards in information modelling driven by ISO, OGC as well as drawing on open standards implementations from the US (NGA), NATO (BiSC AIS Core GIS) and EU (Inspire).

SEA

15 Aug 07. Saab Underwater Systems receives an order for underwater vehicles designated for the Finnish Navy’s new mine hunting vessels. The value of the order, including options, exceeds SEK 80m. The procurer is the German company Atlas Elektronik, which will integrate the systems on the vessels. The Double Eagle Systems are remotely operated underwater vehicles, and used by navies all over the world for mine hunting and other operations.

14 Aug 07. Ultra Electronics has won a €3m contract from the Turkish Navy for its Sea Sentor surface ship torpedo defence system. (Source: Google)

AIR

13 Aug 07. The Spanish Air Force has recently purchased two more EADS CASA C-295 military transport aircraft, bringing the total number of these aircraft in the fleet operated by the Spanish Air Force to 13 units. In addition to the initial nine aircraft purchased in December 2000, two additional aircraft were ordered in December 2005 and December 2006. (Source: MoD Defence Contracts Bulletin)

06 Aug 07. RAF launches continued Hercules enhancements. Last year’s upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan has led to the launch of a series of further improvements aimed at increasing the protection and reliability of the UK Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) Lockheed Martin C-130J Hercules C.4/C.5 fleet. The increased fighting in 2006 saw the RAF’s primary airlifters take the burden of UK tactical airlift operations in the Middle East. (Source: Jane’s)

USA

LAND

14 Aug 07. DRS Technologies, Inc. received a $131m contract for Appliqué computer systems inserted with new technologies such as multi-core processors, for the U.S. Army’s Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and Below (FBCB2)/Blue Force Tracking (BFT) programs. The contract was placed by the U.S. Army’s Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command (CELCMC) at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The company’s DRS Tactical Systems unit in Melbourne, Florida will perform the work and is scheduled to begin delivering the computer systems this November. The new computer systems will include multi-core processors, increased memory, and expansion capability to allow for future technology improvements. These enhancements provide the computer systems with better graphics processing, data handling and system networking capabilities.

13 Aug 07. DRS Technologies, Inc. received a $6.2m contract from the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Massachusetts, to provide hundreds of their small-scale Joint Service Transportable Decontamination Systems (JSTDS-SS). The work for this award will be performed by the company’s DRS Sustainment Systems business unit in St. Louis, Missouri. DRS is scheduled to begin delivering the decontamination syste