Martin Marietta Wins Key 5-Year ‘Star Wars’ Pact

Martin Marietta was awarded an important $508-million contract Friday to build a National Test Bed simulation facility for the Strategic Defense Initiative, dealing its competitor Rockwell International a sharp defeat.

Under a five-year contract awarded through the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, Martin will design and build a large computer-driven simulation complex that will explore the feasibility of stopping a Soviet nuclear missile attack. SDI is popularly known as the “Star Wars” system.

“The National Test Bed represents a quantum leap in the field of computer simulation,” said Norman R. Augustine, vice chairman and chief executive of Martin Marietta. “This program will greatly aid . . . efforts to ascertain both the feasibility and utility of what is certainly the most sophisticated defense system ever devised.”

The National Test Bed program, which includes the construction of several facilities at Falcon Air Force Base in Colorado and the installation of a computer complex with a Cray supercomputer, will create about 1,500 jobs at its peak, a Martin spokesman said.

Martin’s winning proposal on the system was assisted by several other contractors, including Southern California-based Hughes Aircraft, Logicon and Ralph M. Parsons Co.

Hughes Aircraft Vice President Steven Dorfman said Hughes Space & Communications Group will provide Martin with data software and communications services worth about $70 million over the five-year program.

“There is every hope that this will be a continuing program,” Dorfman said. A good deal of the engineering work will be done at Hughes’s Denver facility, he said.

Logicon, a Torrance-based defense electronics contractor, said it will conduct work in threat analysis, the estimation of what Soviet threats are and how the Soviets would structure a nuclear attack. A Logicon spokesman said the company’s work will represent about 5% to 10% of the $508-million program.

Parsons officials were not available for comment. Other Martin team members included Carnegie-Mellon University, Computer Technology Associates, International Business Machines and Singer.

A Rockwell spokesman said the company was “disappointed,” but would move forward with other SDI work. Rockwell has $600 million in SDI contracts, he said. Rockwell’s team included TRW, Ford Aerospace and Teledyne Brown.

The National Test Bed is to include a number of special computer centers and “simulation facilities” spread across the country that will be electronically linked--including an experimental command center at Falcon station near Colorado Springs. The system will test different targeting and control systems for Star Wars.

Falcon is also the home of the $1.2-billion Consolidated Space Operations Center, which controls military satellites in space. The area is considered ideal for such activity because of its isolation from electromagnetic interference.