NATO picks SAIC team for missile defence contract

BRUSSELS, Sep 18: NATO will announce today it has chosen a group led by U.S.-based Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for the next phase of a project aimed at linking the missile defence systems of its member nations, an alliance official said.

The contract is worth an initial 75 million euros (95.4 million dollar) over six years, said the official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the announcement.

''SAIC has been selected,'' the official said, adding the contract was to develop the so-called ''testbed'' on which the technologies involved in building the system could be tested.

Employee-held research and development group SAIC announced last year it would bid for the contract in a consortium including France's Thales, EADS, Germany's Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft (IABG), Britain's QinetiQ, the Netherlands' Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, and U.S.-based Raytheon.

U.S.-based Boeing and Northrop Grumman also led teams competing for the contract.

''It will be the most sophisticated command and control system of its type in the world and will be able to integrate the missile defence system of every NATO nation,'' said the official, who did not say when the project would be completed.

The United States alone is spending about billion a year on building a missile defence system which is a scaled-down version of the defence shield known as ''Star Wars'' envisioned by former President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

A NATO-commissioned study found in May of this year that a missile defence system for Europe was technically and financially feasible, without saying when it would materialise.

Such a defence shield would locate missiles by the use of strategically placed sensors and launch interceptor missiles to knock them out.

Reuters