Interesting news and I know a few guys out there will be glad to find this out. If any of the readers have anything to add, please feel free to comment below. –Matt
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U.S. Department of State Awards Northrop Grumman African Training Contract
July 6, 2010
The U.S. Department of State has awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman Corporation to continue providing staff to conduct peacekeeping operations and humanitarianism assistance training for the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program.
The contract has a potential value of $150 million over five years.
“The ACOTA program is to arguably the most successful engagement program that the U.S. State Department has had in Africa. The objective is to enable participating nations’ militaries to develop their own trained unit capacity to provide peacekeeping support operations where required,” said Mike Devlin, Northrop Grumman Technical Services International Program Director. “We are most pleased that we have been again selected to continue successfully supporting the ACOTA mission.”
“International collaboration is a crucial component to peacekeeping efforts,” said Tom Vice, corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman Technical Services. “We’ve been supporting the ACOTA program for more than 11 years in 22 countries, and we embrace the opportunity to spend another 5 years supporting these African nations.”
Northrop Grumman provides the staff and training to select African Nations through seminars, instruction, simulation-supported exercises and field training. Nations currently participating in the ACOTA program include Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia. Northrop Grumman has supported the African Crisis Response Initiative/African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACRI/ACOTA) program since its inception in 1998 and designed the initial training materials and conducted computer-assisted peacekeeping exercises for African Partner Nations.
Work on the ACOTA program will be performed on site in the participating African nations and from Northrop Grumman’s Leavenworth, Kan., facility, where Northrop Grumman supports several other military training contracts.
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.
Story here.