Marconi Communications has won a £29 million contract to modernise Boeing's AWACS aircraft with new electronics.

The work will be carried out on the airborne warning and control planes which are used by NATO.

The order for the sophisticated new equipment, designed and to be partially built at Chelmsford, comes from Boeing's Seattle USA Headquarters. The specification will be to examine targets and identify if they are friendly or hostile.

Marconi claims world leadership in this field of electronic identification technology. The project will be carried out jointly with US partner Telephonics to develop a system compatible with American-only and NATO systems.

John Rosie, Marconi divisional defence director at Chelmsford, says the new system has been designed to fit existing AWACS without changes to the aircraft design, but will provide major improvements in performance, reliability, and maintainability .

The equipment is due to be fitted in December 1999.

The order comes less than a month after a Marconi operation was set up in Britain's coastguard stations on the digital global maritime distress system.

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