All MoD comms

has been awarded a £2.5 million, 12-month MoD contract to deliver an integrated, modular, mobile command and control system.

The mobile command and control system is based on field-proven commercial off the shelf (COTS) components, including servers, laptops, routers, telephones, faxes, scanners and printers all integrated into a number of commercial vehicles, to form distinct, secure IT communications nodes. With a modular, resilient and distributed architecture, the systems have been designed with a 10 years service life and can be rapidly deployed and redeployed where and whenever needed.

"This solution means that these vehicles can be driven to wherever a complete user friendly, fully operational, optimised communication network node needs to be quickly established," said Peter Baynham, MD of QinetiQ's Command & Intelligence Systems business.

"Once unpacked, specialist staff then need only to turn up at the designated location, plug in and they can then securely communicate back to their central location, confident that they have secure access to all the systems and files they require to deal with the scenario they face."