Air Force's mega IC4I pact finds new home at Alabama

The $929 million program established to provide the intelligence and military command and control communities with information technology products and services recently pulled up stakes and moved to the Air Force's Standard Systems Group (SSG) in Montgomery, Ala., in a last-ditch effort to breathe new life into the lagging contract.

The Integration for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (IC4I) contract officially moved June 15 from the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., to SSG after more than two years of lackluster sales and various problems administering the program.

The contract suffered from few resources at Hanscom, and administrators "were always overwhelmed," said Michael Fox, director of advanced programs for Systems Research and Applications Corp. (SRA), one of three vendors awarded contracts under the program.

Although the contract "hasn't lived up to its billing, the folks down [at SSG] really understand how to make a program like this successful," Fox said.

IC4I was awarded in 1996 to BTG Inc., SRA and Cordant Inc., which was subsequently bought out by Tracor and is now known as Marconi due to the recent acquisition by General Electric Co. Each vendor received a contract ceiling of $929 million.