Posted by Courtney E. Howard

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich., 24 Jan. 2011. General Dynamics Land Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, won two contracts worth $44 million for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's tank program. The contracts, awarded by the U.S. Army TACOM Lifecycle Management Command on behalf of the Royal Saudi Land Forces, are part of a plan by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to upgrade its entire fleet of 314 tanks.

The first contract of $37.1 million is to provide materials and labor for the conversion of 42 M1A2 tanks to an M1A2S configuration for the Kingdom. The M1A2S will sport defined capabilities that increase lethality and limit obsolescence. The conversion work will be performed by employees at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio, with an estimated completion date of September 20, 2012.

The second contract, worth $6.9 million, will provide the tools and equipment needed to outfit a production facility in Saudi Arabia for future conversion of M1A2 tanks to the M1A2S version. Work will be performed in Sterling Heights, Mich., with an estimated completion date of August 1, 2012.

These contracts extend work started in 2008 to design, develop, convert, implement, and test a hybrid configuration of the M1A1, M1A2, and M1A2 System Enhancement Package (SEP) tank variants for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.