Training of Pakistani intelligence and military personnel in the use of electronic surveillance and analysis equipment potentially could take place on U.S. soil, according to an Army planning document that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor has located.
The document asserted that the Army at this point only is conducting a market survey of firms capable of providing such training; however, the “sources sought” notice equally made clear that a follow-on Foreign Military Sales procurement of services would allow the training to take place either outside of the country—Pakistan, specifically—or domestically.
The notice referred to Arizona, Florida, and Maryland as possible training locations without explicitly identifying facilities or military bases. Presumably, though, one such possibility is the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, whose contracting center is coordinating what formally is known as the Market Survey for Ground Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (GISR) System (Solicitation #MARKET-SURVEY-5101-1).
The GISR system was developed by DRS Technologies, a Parsippany, N.J.-based subsidiary of Finmeccanica SpA— a company for which the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance owns, according to the corporate website, 30.2% of the share capital.
Though the notice did not identify the name of the GISR system that DRS developed, nor did it refer to a specific, previous contract to develop that system, the document offered the following description:
The system provides rapid detection and localization of a wide-range of threat signals, monitors signals of interest, and supports real-time analysis to provide mission-critical intelligence to the warfighter. The system consists of a combination of 3 or more subsystems each consisting of; a manpackable direction finding (DF) and homing VHF/UHF receiver, a handheld computer, DF and communications antennas, handheld radio for communications and internetworking, a video transmitting air to ground microwave communications system, a vehicular mounting kit for on the move operations, and a sophisticated signals analysis node hosted on a laptop computer and connected via radio.
Separately, the U.S. government in recent years awarded DRS contracts valued in the billions for a multitude of technology and training programs, many which the company carried out or supplied in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, one of its employees—former U.S. Marine Javier de la Garza—was killed while working for DRS as a communications technician in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was updated Jan. 31, 2012, to include a direct link to the above-mentioned market-survey document. It should be noted that, as of this date, the U.S. Army has not make publicly available any further information about the Pakistani training endeavor).
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U.S. Aid to Pakistan Continues as Debate Over bin Laden Complicity Rages
USTDA to Fund Initial Phase of Pakistan's 'Clean Energy' Bus Initiative
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