QinetiQ US on Monday said it has received a potential $170 million contract from Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Office to operate and maintain the agency’s tethered aerostats that provide long-range radar detection and monitoring along the southern border and in two maritime locations.
Peraton was the incumbent for Tethered Aerostat Radar System (TARS) operations and maintenance effort. The company won a recompete of the contract in 2020 but CBP withdrew the award due to unresolved concerns with the new contract, keeping Peraton onboard with an extension while conducting another competition.
QinetiQ US, a subsidiary of Britain’s QinetiQ plc, won the recompete, which was protested by Peraton. The Government Accountability Office dismissed the protest in July.
The TARS Operations and Maintenance III contract has a base year and four one-year option periods. Work under the contract includes aerostat operations, air-surface radar operations, ground control and data networking systems monitoring, and data analysis to increase program efficiency and effectiveness.
The aerostats are integrated with long-range radar, electro-optic and infrared sensors for wide area detection and monitoring of low-flying aircraft and surface traffic, both maritime and ground, from eight sites. Six of the installations are along the U.S. border with Mexico and two sites monitor the Florida Straits, and a portion of the Caribbean Sea south and west of Puerto Rico.
“The CBP TARS program adds to our decades plus support to DHS and the CBP mission at our borders, while also providing us the opportunity to pull from our expansive C5ISR portfolio, specifically in persistence surveillance,” Shawn Purvis, president and CEO of QinetiQ US, said in a statement.
The contract was won by QinetiQ US’s Avantus Federal business, which was acquired in 2022.
QinetiQ US’s teammates on the program include C Speed, LLC, Elevated Technologies, LLC, and Skyship Services, Inc.