Marines buying $880 million worth of PCs, laptops and tablet computers

The Marine Corps has kicked off a massive purchase of more than 400,000 desktop and laptop computers, valued at $880 million, under a contract that also requires a smaller number of commercial and rugged tablet computers.

The service wants to buy the bulk of the gear -- 131,965 general purpose laptops and 141,838 desktop computers -- through a five-year Marine Corps Common Hardware Suite procurement announced Monday.

The Marines will also use the contract as an umbrella vehicle to acquire 7,220 commercial tablet computers and 7,880 rugged tablet computers as well as 15,850 small, lightweight netbook computers.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Moran, who now works for Harris Corp., said the planned Marine bulk buy of tablet computers though small will prove to be the wave of the future for tactical computing. Moran, who served as deputy director for command, control and computer systems on the Joint Chiefs of Staff before retirement, said tablets are ideal for viewing maps and other graphic information.

Moran predicted that tablets will be used throughout infantry units, eventually down to the platoon and squad levels. He said the Army will test tablet computers later this month in a large-scale tactical network exercise at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The Marines said they plan to use this massive buy to establish a standardized computing equipment environment for deploying units and also to provide equipment for domestic organizations that will be connected to the Navy's Next-Generation Network. Equipment purchased for units that deploy will require global logistics support, the request for proposals said.

Security is another key requirement of the procurement, and the Marines told bidders that it did not intend to purchase any computers that include Bluetooth short-range wireless -- a standard built into commercial PCs -- and they also must provide the capability to disable other forms of wireless communications, including Wi-Fi, radio frequency identification and GPS.

The Marines have the Common Hardware Suite procurement on a fast track, with bids due July 22.