Lockheed bags $766 million combined radio/networking platform deal for the US military

Washington DC: Lockheed Martin Corp has won a $766.2 million Pentagon contract to design and build a radio system which will connect aircraft, ships and ground stations across the US military system. The deal, announced late Friday, could replace much of the US military force's existing radio equipment and install thousands of new ones.

Potentially, the deal may be worth billions of dollars for Lockheed. It beat Boeing for the contract which makes it a second big loss for the Chicago-head quartered behemoth. Last month, it lost a $35 billion contract to replace 179 US Air Force air-to-air refuelling tankers to a EADS-Northrop Grumman combine.

The contract is part of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), a major US Defence Department programme that intends to replace much of the US military force's existing radio equipment with those that will allow Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps troops to communicate with each other, either through conversations or video and other data.

The JTRS is designed to form the digital backbone for all future military communications, enabling military personnel to communicate with other, across various services, in a split second.

The Joint Tactical Radio System programme intends to replace older systems that are now  no longer compatible or 'interoperable.' The new equipment will also seek to regularise the haphazard purchases made in earlier times by different branches of the military. At times, this leads to a strange situation for the US military, where its radios cannot communicate with each other inside the same service.

According to analysts, there are at least two dozen types of incompatible radio systems in the field, which often forces troops to carry multiple radios.

The contract awarded to Lockheed is for the "airborne, maritime and fixed site" part of the JTRS programme, much of which is associated with the Air Force and Navy. This part will upgrade radios on C-130, C-5 and C-17 transport aircraft, Global Hawk and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, Apache helicopters and Osprey tilt-rotor vertical/short take-off and landing aircraft.

Lockheed's contract will also produce radios for surface ships and subsurface ships, including aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and several amphibious vessels.

"This system is crucial to support information sharing and combat readiness, a must for today's warfighters," said John Mengucci, president of Mission & Combat Support Solutions for Lockheed Martin's Information Systems & Global Services.

However, Boeing already holds the contract for a complementary piece of the JTRS program, which involves supplying ground mobile radios, to be used primarily by the US Army and the Marine Corps. This part of the contract has faced cost overruns, scheduling delays and technical hurdles, which forced restructuring several years ago.

According to defence analysts, this new radio system is critical to the success of Future Combat Systems, a massive US Army modernization programme, which intends to use futuristic communications technology to link manned and unmanned aircraft and vehicles in real time.

Boeing is one of the lead contractors on that programme.

Boeing says that the programme is now back on track, but defence analysts say that the delays on the Army contract could have likely influenced the decision on this contract.