The NATO Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence Programme Office contracted today with an industry team led by SAIC an effort worth 2.5 million Euro to analyze in detail the technical requirements to transform NATO’s Theatre Missile Defence Programme into a programme to protect the NATO territory and populations, as well as deployed forces.
Industry engineers from France (EADS Astrium), Germany (IABG), Italy (SELEX SI), The Netherlands (TNO), UK (QINETIQ) and US (SAIC, Raytheon) will form the core of a technical team that will work in support of the ALTBMD Programme Office(who retains the product delivery responsibility) in its facilities at the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) in The Hague. It will be a year-long analytic effort that will define the additional requirements to expand the existing Theatre Missile Defence into a Ballistic Missile Defence for NATO Europe.
The results will then be taken forward for implementation in the NATO command and control network to broaden the capabilities of the NATO commander well beyond those demonstrated recently in missile defence testing between the United States and NATO elements last month.
“The initiation of this work marks a significant step by the technical community to implement the decision taken at the Lisbon Summit to develop a NATO capability to defend NATO Europe against the threat to their people and territory posed by the growing proliferation of ballistic missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction,” said Alessandro Pera, Programme Manager for the NATO ALTBMD Programme Office, the organization charged with developing this capability for NATO, “We will work as a team with our industry and national partners, in close consultation with both the NATO military and relevant NATO Committees, to ensure we get the job done. ”
NATO signs first contracts for territorial missile defence