Autonetics, Boeing Team Seek Contract : Defense: The pact would be to produce guidance kits for bombs. The initial phase would be worth $44 million.

Rockwell International Corp. said Monday it has teamed up with Boeing to pursue an Air Force and Navy contract to make guidance kits for bombs.

Rockwell’s Autonetics Electronic Systems Division in Anaheim, where more than 3,000 people are employed, would be the lead division on the $44 million first phase of the project. If the system goes into production, as is expected, the resulting follow-on contracts could be worth $1 billion.

Boeing and Rockwell want to produce the Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, a low-cost electronic guidance kit that allows existing 1,000- and 2,000-pound gravity bombs to be precisely aimed at targets, the companies said in a release from Huntsville, Ala.

“We’re taking dumb bombs and making them smart bombs,” said Elliott Pulham, Boeing Defense & Space Group spokesman in Huntsville.

Boeing’s Missiles & Space Division in Huntsville will lead its efforts, with help from its Product Support Division in Wichita, Kan., and Military Airplanes Division in Seattle.

The Defense Department is expected to pick a contractor in about six months, Pulham said, if money for the program is in next year’s defense budget.

Rockwell spokesman George Torres said the bomb contract would be a major boost for Rockwell in Anaheim, where the company is the second-largest employer behind Disneyland. He said he was not sure, however, whether it would boost employment.

The contract is one of two important weapons-related jobs that would affect the division. The other is a proposed update of the guidance and electronic systems in aging Minuteman III ballistic missiles. Torres said the division expects to hear by year’s end whether it won that contract.

Fred Sheldon, Rockwell’s director of the JDAM program, said in a press release that Rockwell would provide its expertise in electronic navigation systems, while Boeing would offer experience in airframe structures and integration.

Boeing’s Pulham said that Rockwell, which has its corporate headquarters in Seal Beach, “has some tremendous off-the-shelf capability, and that’s why we’re teamed with them.”

Boeing participated in the Air Force’s Inertial Technology Demonstration Program, in which 17 inertially guided bombs were built and successfully tested. The program laid much of the groundwork for the JDAM project, Boeing said.

Times staff writer Chris Woodyard contributed to this report.