Navy Awards Pair Of IT Modernization DealsNavy Awards Pair Of IT Modernization Deals

Anteon International Corp. and Raytheon Technical Services Co., a subsidiary of Raytheon Co., have won 10-year contracts worth up to a combined $726 million to help the U.S. Navy modernize IT within its Atlantic fleet.

Raytheon stands to make up to $378 million for its work providing IT engineering, technical, and logistics services to the Navy's Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center's combat systems department. The Fleet Technical Support Center provides the Navy's ships with combat, command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support. Most of Raytheon's work will be done at the Navy's Hampton Road, Va., facility, as well as aboard Navy, Coast Guard, Military Sealift Command, and Foreign Military Sales ships.

Anteon's contract, worth up to $348 million, calls for the contractor to modernize the Fleet Technical Support Center's legacy IT systems, as well as develop and support new combat, command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence technology. Both contracts were disclosed Monday.

"Most of the Navy's ships are massive engineering success stories, but not necessarily technologically current," Anteon CEO Joe Kampf says.

Anteon's Navy contract announcement comes at a time when the military is looking to digitize and automate its systems. One possible application of such automation could be the use of fiber-optic cable to automate valve system monitoring on ships rather than relying on last-century analog dials placed at each valve.

In general, "a lot of work will be tying together communications, navigation, weapons, fire control, and HVAC systems and integrating them with information technology," Kampf says, adding that this kind of automation reduces the need for labor and cuts costs.

Anteon's latest Navy contract comes on the heels of another 10-year deal revealed in late May and worth as much as $254 million. For that contract, Anteon will perform IT maintenance, as opposed to development, work for the Navy's Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center.

These large contracts illustrate the Navy's desire to modernize and integrate IT systems within its fighting fleet. Government purchasing targets integration now more than it has in the past, Kampf says. "Unless you begin to share information and have a common view of a threat," he adds, "the response will be much as it was on Sept. 11: inadequate for the task at hand."