Lockheed Martin snares massive Pentagon comm deal

The Air Force Pentagon Communications Agency has awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a multimillion contract to provide IT products and services to 15,000 users?many at or near the Pentagon.

The 10-year deal, announced late Friday, is expected to be worth roughly $600 million. Lockheed Martin will support users at Air Force headquarters, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Military Command Center and several other offices.

The Air Force agency provides voice services, videoconferencing, cable installation, software integration, engineering, program management, lifecycle support and help desk services. Lockheed Martin will take over much of this work.

Under an initial $10 million transition phase, Lockheed Martin IT will spend the next six months planning and migrating communications operations run by the Air Force Pentagon Communications Agency to the company, a Lockheed Martin official said.

The company will provide classified and unclassified IT services to users in the Washington area. Some of the services include e-mail maintenance, database support, Web operations and configuration management of the agency's common operating environment.

Lockheed Martin also will take over network management, security and desktop computer services. It covers offices at the Pentagon as well as remote users in Arlington, Va., and Vienna, Va., and at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., and Bolling Air Force Base, Washington.

The list of losing bidders included Alion Science and Technology of McLean, Va., Anteon Corp. of Fairfax, Va., Computer Sciences Corp., EDS Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Unisys Corp.

Dawn S. Onley writes for Government Computer News magazine.