Army awards WIN-T contract to General Dynamics, Lockheed

The Army's battlefield communications will get some improvements with help from General Dynamics and its primary subcontractor, Lockheed Martin, under a $921 million contract the service awarded Sept. 18.The contract covers Increments Two and Three of the Army’s Warfighter Information Network–Tactical program, including development of initial WIN-T capabilities, early fielding of the technologies in Increment Two, and continued development of WIN-T components to expand their capacity, security and mobility in Increment Three.The contract award follows the Army’s June restructuring of its Joint Network Node–Network initiative into the four-phase WIN-T program, which encompassed JNN-N as Increment One. JNN-N seeks to develop and field a mobile tactical network that will deliver voice, data and imagery to soldiers at the company level. The Army launched JNN-N in 2004 to replace its aging Mobile Subscriber Equipment battlefield communications gear.In the contracts awarded this week, the portion that covers WIN-T Increment Two is valued at $126 million and is for development of an initial mobile broadband network of satellite and radio links and early fielding of the capability beginning in 2009.The portion that covers WIN-T Increment Three is worth $795 million and covers additional development of network components to augment their capacity, security and mobility, with user testing scheduled to start in 2011. Increment Three also includes development of the WIN-T components that will be carried aboard the Army’s Future Combat Systems vehicles and meet the size, weight, power and cooling limit requirements of the planned combat vehicles.