The South Korean defence department is planning to deploy an advanced digital command-and-control and sensor-to-shooter battlefield communications system as part of its modernisation process.
The Defence Acquisition Programme Administration (DAPA) will soon issue bids to develop the $146m tactical information communication network (TICN), scheduled to be deployed by 2012.
The TICN system allows for the integrated transmission of video, image and voice data at more than ten times the speed of the existing SPIDER system, which can only transmit still images and voice data.
The TICN network system consists of five sub-systems, including high-capacity trunk radio (HCTR), tactical multibband and multirole radio (TMMR) and a network management system (NMS).
DAPA also plans to spend a total of $3.8bn on replacing the South Korean Army’s SPIDER communications system.
The companies, which participated in the exploratory development phase of the project and include Samsung Thales, LIG Nex1 and Huneed Technologies, are likely to be selected as preferred bidders for the full-scale development phase.