Army awards WIN-T pact

The Army awarded a pair of contracts that will let two vendor teams battle it out for the multibillion-dollar Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) program, a tactical intranet that will use commercial technologies for wired and wireless voice, data and video communications.

Lockheed Martin Mission Systems in Gaithersburg, Md., and General Dynamics C4 Systems in Taunton, Mass., were each awarded Aug. 9 the first increments of contracts worth nearly $75 million to define, validate and test the architecture and technology that will make up the core of the WIN-T system.

WIN-T, which is worth about $10 billion through 2012, is a systems integration program to develop the Army's tactical communications network for offensive combat and joint operations for the Objective Force, said Col. Tom Cole, WIN-T project manager at the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical at Fort Monmouth, N.J.

The Objective Force will transform the Army's armored forces to make them better able to survive an all-out fight.

"Mobile battle command is not just phones, but the whole infrastructure around [which] it moves," said Dave Kelley, program executive for WIN-T at Lockheed Martin Mission Systems. "Making that realizable on the battlefield shifts the burden from the signal soldier to the technology."

Jerry DeMuro, president of General Dynamics C4 Systems, said the Army having commanders access information whenever and wherever they need it sounds "very elegant," but it will require the development of new tools.

The WIN-T production contract will be open to vendor competition in fiscal 2005 and awarded the following year, Cole said.