Defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin will join an existing team made up of several other large companies in a bid for the Navy’s forthcoming multibillion dollar Next Generation Enterprise Network contract.

The news comes shortly after Lockheed decided not to pursue a bid of its own for NGEN, which is the Navy’s follow-on to the present-day Navy-Marine Corps Internet (NMCI), which serves 700,000 users, primarily in the United States and Japan.

The team Lockheed is joining includes Hewlett Packard, Northrop Grumman, AT&T and IBM. The announcement was made in an internal email circulated to HP employees Tuesday. At least one other major corporate coalition, made up of Computer Sciences Corporation, Harris Corporation, General Dynamics and Verizon, is also expected to compete.

The Navy originally expected to issue the final request for proposals for NGEN in December, but delayed the release in order to gather more input from prospective bidders.

The final RFP now is expected to be issued any day. Capt. Shawn Hendricks, NGEN’s program manager told an industry conference last week that the document itself is complete, and that the Navy is in final briefings with members of Congress and other stakeholders before it formally announces the solicitation.

Under the original NMCI model, the entire network was owned and operated by Hewlett Packard. Under NGEN, vendors will operate the network while the Navy will own the physical infrastructure and intellectual property.

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