Aerospace and defence firm Northrop Grumman has been chosen to progress an advanced biometric security programme for the US military.
The DOD-ABIS (Department of Defense Automated Biometric Identification System) allows members of the US armed forces to rapidly identify individuals deemed threatening to the preservation of US security.
Having developed DoD-ABIS five years ago, Northrop Grumman will now essentially maintain and re-develop it through a new $141m contract that also involves a raft of other firms including Booz Allen Hamilton Inc,, SAIC Inc., Six3 Systems Inc., SRA International Inc. and E&M Technologies Inc.
This will potentially give US warfighters an even more effective tool in the international fight against terrorism and other 21st century threats.
The Automated Biometric Identification System lies at the heart of the US Defense Department's biometric identification programme. It's a multi-model system, in the sense it carries out face scans, fingerprint scans, iris scans and palm scans on threatening or potentially-threatening subjects.
DoD-ABIS is compatible with other elements of US national security, such as IAFIS - the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System used by the FBI - and it can be accessed from any part of the globe.
According to a new Northrop Grumman press release, the progressional order that's now been placed will see the firm assume ‘primary development responsibility of DoD-ABIS including program management, systems engineering, software development, integration, training, disaster recovery, case management, system sustainment, scalability and interoperability'.
"DoD-ABIS is a proven multimodal biometric enterprise system that is helping to protect the lives of the warfighter and personnel assigned to U.S. bases worldwide", Northrop Grumman representative Alan Leckenby stated in the firm's DoD-ABIS development order press release.
"Northrop Grumman's broad expertise developing and fielding advanced biometrics applications across defense, civilian and law enforcement environments will be a critical asset to the Defense Department as it maintains its position as a leader and early adopter of multi-modal biometric technologies."
The data acquired by DoD-ABIS is used not only by US military personnel, but also by members of other US organisations. Look out for further coverage of this system in future Security Technology News Items.
Image copyright Northrop Grumman
See also:
Companies supplying Biometrics
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