Marines Support NMCI

The Marine Corps fully stands behind the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet and plans to make the transition to the new enterprise infrastructure in mid- and late 2002, Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones said in a letter to the House Armed Services Committee.

The committee, chaired by Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., has recommended that the Marines be released from participating in the $6.9 billion contract to outsource its desktop computers, networks and related infrastructure to Electronic Data Systems Corp., Plano, Texas.

Jones said the Marine Corps would be harmed if released from the contract.

"Any exclusion of the Marine Corps from NMCI would exacerbate the degraded condition of our information technology infrastructure that has not been modernized for almost two years awaiting NMCI," Jones wrote. "We have recently updated our affordability analysis for NMCI, and under the present conditions of the contract, we are confident it is affordable for the Marine Corps."