BRUSSELS - NATO signed an initial contract for a sophisticated ground surveillance radar system Thursday in an acquistion program that could cost as much as four billion euros (5.2 billion dollars), the military alliance said Thursday.
The contract, worth 23 million euros at this stage, was signed with a transatlantic consortium led by US defence contractor Northop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS).
It covers initial stage of designing and developing a cutting-edge airborne ground surveillance project, the alliance said.
The program "will be one of the most expensive acquisition programmes ever undertaken by the alliance, and one of the most sophisticated, technologically," NATO said in a statement.
The project aims to give commanders and other decision makers radar imagery able to spot and track ground targets in near-real-time, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said.
A high level NATO official said on condition of anonymity that the objective was to have the system initially up and running around 2010 despite some minor delays.
NATO currently has a fleet of 17 E-3 AWACS airplanes to provide radar coverage for airspace.
But the new system would give the transatlantic alliance radar imaging capabilities to monitor ground targets such as troops.
The system would use a combination of modified A321 Airbus airplanes and the US-made Global Hawk unmanned drones to monitor the ground from the air.
In addition to Northrop Grumman and EADS, the consortium developing the project groups Thales of France, Galileo Avionica of Italy, General Dynamics Canada and Indra of Spain.
The acquisition of the ground monitoring system has been one of NATO's priorities for 10 years, but progress has been held up largely by financial and industrial questions.
However, the project was taken out of the closet at a November 2002 NATO summit in Prague, where heads of state agreed to get such a system up and running based on the existing AWACS fleet.
04/28/2005 13:27 GMT