Navy awards $25 million contract
By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Hawai'i division of military contracting firm Orincon has won a $25 million contract to help the Navy upgrade its submarine warfare Internet system.
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The goal is to let the Theater Undersea Warfare commanders at Pearl Harbor communicate online with sub-detecting forces scattered across the Pacific, Orincon officials said.
Ty Aldinger, program director for Orincon in Hawai'i, said the contract will mean hiring more people.
The five-year contract represents a substantial expansion of an ongoing Orincon project, meaning the San Diego-based company will probably add workers at its Kailua offices, said Ty Aldinger, program director for Orincon in Hawai'i.
The firm, which employs 26 people in Kailua, will likely add five to 10 people each year for the next several years as it ramps up the project, Aldinger said.
The system resembles a no-frills Web browser operating on the Navy's secure Internet. It would collect data from anti-sub planes, ships, sonar buoys and other detectors and consolidate it in a single computer program.
The system will use the military's supercomputers at the Maui High Performance Computing Center and some of the hardware at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kaua'i.
"It's essentially providing all the strategic and tactical information that the undersea warfare commander needs," Aldinger said.
A similar Orincon system has been in use on Navy ships since 1998 and was deployed throughout the Navy in July 2001.
Aldinger said Orincon Hawaii, like several other Hawai'i contracting firms, is profiting from American military efforts to improve technology since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The contract is capped at just under $25 million.
Reach John Duchemin at jduchemin@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8062.
