Industry teams to compete for Army's unmanned tanks

General Dynamics Corp., Falls Church, Va., and Boeing Co., Chicago, have both announced their teams to compete for a $4 billion Army contract to develop unmanned tanks.

General Dynamics' team, announced Jan. 17, consists of Northrop Grumman Corp., Los Angeles; Raytheon Co., Lexington Mass.; United Defense Industries Inc., Arlington, Va.; and ITT Industries Inc., White Plains N.Y.

Boeing has formed a partnership with Science Applications International Corp., San Diego, to compete for the work, Boeing announced Jan. 8.

The teams will vie for the lead systems integration role on the Army's Future Combat Systems, an eight-year program to build unmanned combat vehicles with network-guidance capability.

This contract will expand upon conceptual design work done on an earlier 24-month cost-sharing contract. Awarded in May 2000 under an Army and the Defense Advanced Research Agency collaborative venture, that contract gave $10 million each to teams lead by General Dynamics; Boeing; Science Applications International; and Raytheon and TRW Inc., Cleveland.

As of press time, TRW has not announced its intent to bid on the Future Combat Systems contract.

For its team, Boeing plans to provide the lead system integration expertise, while SAIC will contribute engineering experience in combat systems; command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; modeling; simulation; systems; testing and evaluation.

Members of the General Dynamics team will provide expertise in the following fields:

*ITT: Communications and networking;

*Northrop Grumman: Intelligence, radars, surveillance, reconnaissance and unmanned air vehicles;

*Raytheon: Missiles, modeling and simulation, non-lethal effects and sensors;

*United Defense: Ground platforms, guns, life-cycle support and survivability;

*General Dynamics: Command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance infrastructure; robotics; program management; systems and software integration.