SPY EYES

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Lockheed Martin was due this week to give a demonstration of its command-and-control product pitched in the United Arab Emirates' two-horse tender for an integrated air and missile defense system, a company executive said.

Lockheed Martin was very confident it could "meet or exceed the requirements for the system," Dennis Cavin, vice president of international air and missile defense, said Nov. 13 at the Dubai Airshow.

The U.S –based company and ThalesRaytheonSystems (TRS) are competing for an estimated $1 billion contract under the United Arab Emirates' extended air defense ground environment-transformation program.

Lockheed expects the Emirati authorities to carefully analyze and evaluate the competing offers and select the supplier, Cavin said. A selection decision is understood to be close, he said.

Lockheed also soon expects the country's reduced order for its Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile, Cavin said.

The decisions for the air and missile defense system and the THAAD procurement were not related, but Cavin said that the two Lockheed weapon systems, THAAD and PAC-3, being bought by the United Arab Emirates should be plugged into a command-and-control system offered by the same company.

The initial THAAD buy was valued at $6.95 billion when announced in 2008, but the United Arab Emirates has cut the number of units - and, therefore, the sale's value - by about one third.

TRS, a joint venture between Thales and Raytheon, has made several demonstrations of its product in recent weeks to Emirati officials as part of the tender process, a company executive said.

All technical information has been presented to the United Arab Emirates, and a selection could be made any time, the executive said.

TRS has a presentation display of its SkyView air C4I product on its stand at the exhibition. The display shows a map of France and a host of information tracks and symbols of the air environment with potential for tracking aircraft and missiles in the airspace.

The system features include mission planning and execution, as well as fusing of information from a variety of sources.

The down selection to Lockheed and TRS eliminated Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Saab, industry sources said.

"We respect the customer's decision making process," Dennis Muilenburg, president and chief executive of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said.