By Calvin Biesecker

Raytheon [RTN] yesterday was selected by the United Kingdom’s Home Office to receive a $1.3 billion contract to develop and install a border security system that will allow British authorities to check the background of persons entering and exiting the country against various watch lists.

Raytheon beat British Telecom for the e-Borders contract. In two years, Raytheon’s Trusted Borders team is expected to have the back end processing system in place to allow border management agencies to receive information on passengers and crew entering and exiting the country.

Under e-Borders, U.K. customs and immigration agencies will receive passenger and crew data provided by air, sea and rail carriers in advance of their travel. The program supports an intelligence-led approach to border security by identifying those involved in abuse of U.K. immigration laws, serious and organized crime, and terrorism, Raytheon said.

“By mid-2009 we plan to cover all high risk routes into the U.K. and at least half of all journeys into the U.K. by foreign nationals,” Jacqui Smith, the U.K. Home Secretary, said in a statement yesterday. “We aim to have 95 percent covered by 2010 and all before 2014.”

A pilot project done in advance of e-Borders has tracked over 35 million passengers and resulted in the capture of over 1,000 criminals and checked out over 15,000 suspects, Smith said.

Unlike the U.S. VISIT program, which relies heavily on biometric data, namely fingerprints, to track the entry of foreign nationals into the United States, e-Borders, at least for now, will not be collecting biometric data.

Raytheon is a member of the U.S. VISIT team, which is led by Accenture [ACN]. Accenture is on the Trusted Borders team responsible for training end users on the system and helping to measure the overall business benefits of the system.

Other members of Raytheon’s team include: the U.K.’s Serco, which is responsible for infrastructure and service management; the U.K.s’ Detica, which will perform intelligence and analytics services; Britain’s QinetiQ, which is responsible for security accreditation and human factors; European information technology services provider Steria, which will develop the agency interfaces; and CapGemini, which will develop the business architecture and design business processes.

For Raytheon the e-Borders win gives it a strong position in both domestic and international homeland security programs.