The UK MoD has awarded UK company Roke a £6.7 million ($9.3 million) contract for the supply of the ZODIAC system. It marks the start of an Alpha development phase to derisk delivery of the army’s Land ISTAR programme.
Land ISTAR will deliver an integrated and distributed system of sensors, applications and underlying system architecture that will enable the army to operate with greater precision and speed. ZODIAC will act as the 'central nervous system' for the programme.
According to Roke, it provides the systems required to ingest data from all battlefield sensors and from combined, joint, inter-agency, intra-governmental and multinational intelligence feeds.
‘It will need to fuse, analyse and distribute the resulting intelligence to battlefield users, integrating across land, sea, air, space and cyber and with allies', the document pointed out.
During the Alpha phase of ZODIAC, Roke will be responsible for capturing requirements, initial design, solution architecture, risk reduction and market assessment for further development.