Northrop Grumman Defense Mission Systems Inc. in Reston, VA received a $5.2 million indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee, performance-based contract to provide technical support for integration, development of interfaces, deployment, testing, and transitional operations and maintenance of an integrated Investigative Data Warehouse and FBI Automated Messaging System (FAMS, which provides for secure email interlinks). This contract includes options, which, if exercised, would bring its cumulative value to an estimated $9.8 million.

Work will be performed in Charleston, SC (10%) and Washington, DC (90%), and is expected to be complete by August 2006 (August 2007 with options). The Request for Proposal was posted on the SPAWAR Systems Center E-Commerce website, with one offer received. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in Charleston, SC issued the contract (N65236-05-D-6853).

With great power comes…

Switzerland Economics Minister Joseph Deiss said on Aug. 15/05 that the country would freeze a deal to send 180 armored personnel carriers (APCs) to Iraq until Baghdad guarantees that the APCs will only be used for “police services, border protection and transport of material.” To Defense Industry Daily’s deep annoyance and considerable regret, our article on the subject has become part of that debate after it was used to assert that the M113 armored personnel carriers would become part of Iraq’s new armored division. To reiterate what we’ve told several Swiss journalists, and what we added on Aug. 13/05 to the very article the Basler Zeitung (wrongly) cited as support for this thesis:

DID did not mean to imply that the M113s are destined for Iraq’s armored division – we had no information to that effect. We used the term “join” only in the sense that these are the first 2 major armored assets purchased by the elected Iraqi government. Which does indeed intend to use the T-72s as part of an armored division. DID could have worded that better, and we apologize for any confusion.

We wish the Basler Zeitung had contacted us in some way (editorial@... works) before running this story – and we wish even more fervently that national and international media like Associated Press and Agence France Presse had either contacted us or gone online to the purported source when dealing with a major political issue, and noted our clear explanation that Basler Zeitung’s claim was based on a misinterpretation. Especially after this fact was published in Berne’s NZZ am Sonntag on Aug 14/05. We have contacted them to set the record straight in no uncertain terms, and we will continue to do so with any other media that get this story wrong. Nevertheless, our article was written in a way that someone, for whatever reason, misunderstood. DID is responsible for writing it that way, which means we screwed up, and we apologize.

M113 in Doraville, Georgia

N.B. With respect the plausibility of M113s for police departments et. al, see the photo at left from the Doraville, Georgia, USA police department. More examples of American police with M113s can be found here. Their Iraqi counterparts, who face much bigger threats due to regular attacks by Islamist paramilitary death squads armed with RPGs and explosives, could probably put M113s to very good use.

On Patrol in Iraq

Armor Holdings subsidiary O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt Armoring Co. in Fairfield, OH received a $21 million firm-fixed-price contract to purchase 350 of the M1114 up-armored High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV). Work will be performed at the company’s Fairfield facilities and is to be completed by Dec. 31, 2005. The U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command Rock Island at Warren, MI issued the contract (DAAE07-00-C-S019).

M1117 Guardian ASVs
(click to enlarge)

Textron’s M1117 Guardian ASV was discussed in a 2005 DID feature covering procurement issues for up-armored Vehicles headed to Iraq. It has performed well and proven popular with Military Police in limited Iraq deployments, but failed MRAP-I testing at Aberdeen and was disqualified from orders under that program. Nevertheless, it continues to be purchased as a better-protected, higher-firepower armored car alternative to the HMMWV.

In July 2005, there were 130 ASVs deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom; by June 2007, there were over 950, with more on order. In between, Textron’s sole production facility was hit hard when Class 5 Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, and the company had to undertake heroic efforts just to keep production alive. We’ve all met venomous snakes in corporate conference rooms, but few of us have been given permission to kill them.

Miami ICE

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Arms and Strategic Technology Investigations (ASTI) division is responsible for investigating illegal exports of military products and sensitive technologies. Last year, ICE’s ASTI division opened approximately 3,000 new criminal investigations. Through an industry outreach program called “Project Shield America,” ICE’s ASTI division is visiting US manufacturers of arms and sensitive technology to educate them about export laws and to solicit their assistance in preventing illegal foreign acquisition of their products. A recent article by Jim Kouri of CPP offered a series of wrap-up summaries regarding some of the recent ICE investigations.

Northrup Grumman won a U.K. contract to provide biometric devices to be deployed in Britain for its criminal identification system. The eight-year contract for the Ident1 system will replace the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which currently allows police to search only their own local databases. The system will also include elements of mobile fingerprint checking and identification from facial images and video. The system will be similar to the U.S.’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, run by the FBI, and the Homeland Security Department’s Automated Biometric Identification System. -FCW.com: UK hires Northrop for fingerprint system