25 May 10. BAE Systems has received a U.S. Army contract worth up to $95m to install and maintain automated security systems to control access to Army bases and other installations. This award expands the company’s work in supporting physical security at government sites. The automated installation entry systems use software and hardware to verify information on individuals and match that information to data on registered vehicles. The company will install the systems at multiple Army sites in the United States and the network will be designed to transfer information across those sites. BAE Systems currently provides similar systems for the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and others in security-critical environments.
26 May 10. Australian Aerospace today announced the sale of a
multi-role Dauphin AS354 N3+ helicopter to the Western Australian Police Service. The contract, worth more than $10m, will provide a much-needed second helicopter for the state’s police – the helicopter is due to be delivered in September 2011.
24 May 10. The Department of Defense announced today that it will use the FBI-owned and maintained eGuardian suspicious activity reporting system as a long-term solution to ensure access to appropriate law enforcement related threat information in support of the department’s missions. The announcement follows two years of analysis and a six-month pilot program designed to determine the best replacement for the Threat and Location Observation Notice (TALON) reporting system, which was terminated in Aug. 2007. Adoption of eGuardian also follows recommendation this past January by the DoD Independent Review related to the Ft Hood shootings that DoD “adopt a common force protection threat reporting system for documenting, storing, and exchanging threat information related to DoD personnel, facilities, and forces in transit.” Data will only be input into eGuardian by authorized personnel who are fully trained with regard to the attorney general’s guidelines and FBI procedures regarding the protection of civil liberties. All data will be reviewed to ensure that information based solely on the ethnicity, race or religion of an individual, or solely on the exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, is not introduced into eGuardian. “The eGuardian system incorporates appropriate safeguards for civil liberties,” wrote Gates in the memo announcing eGuardian’s implementation. The FBI developed eGuardian in 2008 to provide the law enforcement community an unclassified near real time information sharing and threat tracking system. DoD law enforcement and security personnel will be able to share potential terrorist threats, terrorist events, and suspicious activity information with other state, local, tribal, federal law enforcement agencies, state fusion centers, and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Gates directed that the under secretary of defense for policy establish a plan and issue policy and procedures for the implementation of the eGuardian system as DoD’s unclassified suspicious activity reporting system no later than June 30, 2010. A copy of the implementation memo can be found at http://www.defense.gov/news/d20100521SAR2.pdf .