US defence-tech behemoth Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $16m deal to provide the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s fingerprint database with extra processing power.

The contract will run over five years, and will involve the provision of additional HP Superdome UNIX-based kit, similar to that already provided to the Feds by Lockheed in 2003.

"As a long-time partner with the FBI, Lockheed Martin is proud to continue serving an important role in the modernisation of this critical infrastructure that is key to accomplishing the FBI mission," said Steve Lubniewski, Lockheed's enterprise-solutions president.

The new servers will join the Criminal Justice Investigative Services (CJIS) armoury. CJIS provides the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, as well as linked names, criminal histories and other law-enforcement info. Lockheed supports and maintains CJIS IT infrastructure, and is also a prime contractor for the division’s Technology Refreshment Program.

This latest contract will involve a total of 16 Superdome servers and one Flatsdome machine. According to Lockheed, the additional machinery is "designed to upgrade the FBI’s existing HP Superdomes, giving them additional processing power".

Further details are available from Lockheed here.®

Related stories

SAS extends fingerprint ID system for domestic flights (31 January 2008)
Really, really big systems coming by 2027 (23 November 2007)
FBI redefines length of century (21 September 2007)
Hypersonic plane project confirmed by DARPA (19 September 2007)
Secretive FBI 'National Security Letters' to ISPs, Telcos halted (10 September 2007)
Pentagon bins home-front threat database (22 August 2007)
'Hush drive' hand-launch spybot for US special ops (15 August 2007)
Biometrics tackle immigration abuse (8 August 2007)
Greens demand boycott of Lockheed Martin census trial (9 May 2007)
Blair crime policy review proposes fingerprint activated iPods (27 March 2007)