ELBIT CHOSEN FOR WATCHKEEPER PROJECT

LONDON [MENL] — Britain has selected an Israeli unmanned air vehicle for a $1.2 billion army project.

The British Defence Ministry has designated a consortium led by the Paris-based Thales as the preferred bidder in the Watchkeeper program. The ministry plans to launch negotiations with Thales immediately and announce a contract by the end of 2004.

“We’ll start negotiations immediately and the contract will only be let once these have been successfully concluded,” British Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon said on Tuesday. “The letting of this contract worth several hundred million pounds will depend on the successful completion of these negotiations.”

The Thales-led consortium includes Israel’s Elbit Systems, which has offered its Hermes-180 tactical UAV and the Hermes-450 strategic UAV. The UAVs were meant to provide the British Army with an Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance [ISTAR] capability meant to comprise a key component of the military’s project to achieve network-enabled capability