Army selects team for 'Future' work

The Army took a major leap in its transformation efforts by selecting Boeing Co.'s Space and Communications group and Science Applications International Corp. for the service's Future Combat Systems project.

Boeing and SAIC will be the lead systems integrators in developing technologies for the Army's Objective Force, which will have broad ramifications for how the Army operates during war and peacetime.

The $154 million contract, awarded March 7, will integrate information technology into vehicles used throughout the Army with the goal of making its fighting force more agile yet just as lethal.

"We are looking to allow the Army to have brigade-level effects in a battalion-sized force," said Bob Mitchell, Boeing's director of strategic development.

"Future Combat Systems is a major step in the transformation of the Army," said Claude Bolton Jr., assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, and naming the lead systems integrator is "critical to making the Objective Force a reality in this decade."

As envisioned, the Future Combat Systems would create an integrated battlespace, where networked information and communications systems provide a competitive edge to soldiers in the field and commanders in the control room, officials said.

Under the contract, the Boeing/SAIC team has six months to demonstrate that the concept of having a lead systems integrator will work, at which point the Pentagon will decide whether to go forward.

The plan is to have operational capability by 2010, Army officials said.