S. Korea to upgrade military communication network
South Korea will begin developing a digital command-and-control and sensor-to-shooter battlefield system next year, the Defence Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) announced July 28.
The plan was approved by the supreme arms procurement committee presided over by Defence Minister Lee Sang-hee, the agency said in a news release.
The development of the Tactical Information Communication Network (TICN) will be completed by 2012. Work will begin with two years of exploratory development and funding of about 181 billion won ($146 million), said Yoon Chang-oak, chief of the agency's tactical communication and control business department. Over the subsequent eight years, about 4.8 trillion won ($3.8 billion) will be spent to produce and deploy the TICN replacing the South Korean Army's SPIDER communications system, Yoon said.
"For the TICN development, we'll make the most of the made-in-Korea WiBro technology and other indigenous state-of-the-art information technologies with the help of local communications systems developers," Yoon said.
The SPIDER system can transmit only still images and voice data; TICN will allow for the integrated transmission of video, image and voice data more than 10 times faster, he said.
The agency will open a bid for the TICN development project in August and sign contracts with final bidders by the end of December, Yoon noted.
DAPA sources said companies that participated in the exploratory development phase, such as Samsung Thales, LIG Nex1 and Huneed Technologies, will likely be selected as preferred bidders for the full-scale development phase again.
The TICN exploratory development was overseen by the state-funded Agency for Defence Development. The network system consists of five sub-systems, including High Capacity Trunk Radio (HCTR), Tactical Multi-band and Multi-role Radio (TMMR) and Network Management System (NMS).
Samsung Thales was a main developer of TICN, taking charge of the development of NMS and two other sub-systems. LIG Nex1 was in charge of TMMR, while Huneed was a main contractor for HCTR.
Source: www.defensenews.com
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