CACI Wins $5.7 Million Navy Deal to Develop Monitoring System

CACI International Inc., Arlington Va., won a $5.7 million contract with the Navy to develop a tracking system for monitoring hazardous materials, CACI announced Nov. 27.

Under the contract, CACI will develop a prototype automatic identification system, called Geotrack, at the Navy's Automatic Identification Technology Support Facility in St. Inigoes, Md.

CACI's team includes Time Domain Corp., Huntsville, Ala., which will provide chip sets that fuse communications, radar and tracking capabilities; and Cytec Corp., Jackson, Miss., which will provide hardware support.

For Geotrack, chip-set-embedded tags placed on ammunition packages will transmit information on the packages' condition, location and surrounding environment, such as temperature and humidity.

"Combining precision location tracking and wireless communications sets the stage for solving many long-standing logistics problems," said Ken Johnson, CACI's president of U.S. operations. "It will revolutionize the way the Navy tracks ammunition, and has the potential to deliver significant cost and resource savings, enhanced security and improved safety."

CACI officials also said the Geotrack system will have wide applicability throughout the Department of Defense as well as for civilian agencies. Such a system can monitor inventory and equipment susceptible to damage from poor storage conditions. Medical centers can use such a system to manage drug inventories and monitor patients and staff.

"This new contract positions CACI to take a leading role in penetrating this market and delivering the benefits of [ultra wideband] technology to many new communities of users," said CACI chairman and chief executive officer John "Jack". London.

The transmitter technology, developed by Time Domain, is based on ultra wideband wireless radio technology, an emerging wireless standard for transmitting data-rich signals with only one-thousandth of the power needed by conventional radio wave devices.

Because the ultra wideband pulsed signals are spaced across a wide frequency band and timed up to a trillionth of a second, they are highly resistant to jamming and interference from other radios.

Time Domain's transmitter technology "is the only technology available today that can meet the Navy's need for securely communicating the precise location and condition of its ammunition," said retired Col. Will Webb, senior vice president, government and defense sector for Time Domain. "This new wireless architecture can deliver the kind of highly secure, jam-free system the military needs on a worldwide basis."

In July, Time Domain also won a $3 million contract from the Department of Defense Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator Program to develop ultra wideband technology-based handheld surveillance radar that can closely track motion behind walls and other solid surfaces.