By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has requested military prosecutors investigate an alleged information leakage on the selection of a company to manufacture military communication radio systems, a spokesman for the agency said Tuesday.
The request comes amid a stone-throwing campaign over the selection of bidders to participate in the development of the up-to-date Tactical Information Communication Network (TICN), which will replace the existing SPIDER system.
The TICN development is broken into six sectors, including a Network Management System (NMS), High Capacity Trunk Radio (HCTR), and Tactical Multi-band and Multi-role Radio (TMMR).
Samsung Thales, one of the main bidders for the 3.5 trillion won TICN program, has argued that some officials from the DAPA leaked the results of the agency's evaluation committee in November to its rival, LIG Nex1.
Samsung Thales said it had been about to win four of the sub-programs, including the TMMR, worth 1.3 trillion won, but the DAPA accepted complaints by LIG Nex1 to reexamine Samsung's proposal just a day before the final announcement.
It alleged some DAPA officials had leaked the outcome of the evaluation to LIG Nex1.
LIG Nex1 denied the allegation and said the reexamination was fair because Samsung Thales purposely submitted an expired production and service certification.
Last August, the DAPA opened a bid for the full-scale development of TICN, following two years of exploratory development from 2007 to 2008.
The TICN is a cutting-edge digital command-and-control and sensor-to-shooter battlefield system expected to replace the existing SPIDER communication systems run by the Army by 2020.
It is designed to advance into a high-speed, large-capacity, long-distance wireless relay transmission system. SPIDER can only transmit still images and voice data, but TICN allows for the integrated transmission of video, image and voice data at more than 10 times the current speed.
During the exploratory development period, Samsung Thales was in charge of the NMS development and two other subsystems, while LIG Nex1 took charge of TMMR.
Samsung Thales has sought to take over the TMMR portion of the full-scale development.
Sources said, the DAPA had initially been interested in Samsung Thales' offer during the first evaluation in October as the joint venture between Samsung and French defense firm Thales said it could reduce development time by a year and also cut costs to a great extent.