Major defence contractors at Dubai '97 are gearing up to bid for a $1.2-billion contract to create the world's first wholly-integrated military command system - in Kuwait.
The Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) system would operate across Kuwait's air, ground and naval services.
"This is a unique opportunity for a country to integrate systems in this way," says Frank Tullis, Litton Data Systems vice-president, business development. "This is the first time that somebody has been able to create a system of systems from the bottom up."
Kuwait's systems were lost during the Gulf War and since then the state has been relying on short-term systems while the Ministry of Defence worked on its C4I programme.
"The programme has been several years in the making. Obviously, there were lessons learned from the war in which their basic systems did not survive."
Litton has teamed up with GEC-Marconi to bid for the deal. Other bidders are expected to be Lockheed Martin, Raytheon/Hughes and Thomson-CSF. Tullis believes the prime contractor will be American.
The C4I system would link the three services to a joint operations centre in a single programme, be inter-operable and provide links to coalition forces if necessary.
A bidders' conference is to be held in January in Kuwait when the Gulf state's Ministry of Defence will issue a request for proposals.
Source: Flight Daily News