$1.8 billion Air Force deal enters final phase

The Air Force on Tuesday offered Lockheed Martin Corp. and TRW Inc. an opportunity to compete in the final stage of the Air Force's potential $1.8 billion, 15-year Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2) contract.

The contract, slated for award by the Air Force Materiel Command's Electronic Systems Center in September, will integrate 40 air, space and missile defense command and control systems into a single enterprise system architecture that should provide commanders at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) and the U.S. Air Force Space Command with a common, global battlefield picture based on shared, real-time data. Those systems currently use a variety of operating systems and languages.

The four-month down-select phase that Lockheed and TRW will participate in is worth $2.5 million per team. Raytheon Co. did not receive an award during this round of selection, an Electronic Systems Center spokesman said. The four-month competition, called the Migration Demonstration phase, will enable the contractors to demonstrate the flexibility of their architectures and readiness to perform tasks required by the contract.

Lockheed's team includes Boeing Co., General Dynamics Corp., GenCorp Aerojet, DynCorp Information Services, Wang Government Services and GTE Corp., AT&T Technical Services, Microsoft Corp. Federal Systems and other companies. The TRW team includes ITT Industries Inc., Harris Corp., IBM Corp., Jaycor, Oracle Consulting, Science Applications International Corp. and others.

The winning contractor will provide hardware and software upgrades, future communications architecture planning and various information technology services to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Cheyenne Mountain collects data from a worldwide network of satellites, radar systems and other sensors and processes that data on sophisticated computer systems to warn of ballistic nuclear missile or air attacks against North America.