(http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/000921/n21563833.html)

WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp. said Thursday it was starting work immediately on a new $1.5 billion contract to modernise U.S. Air Force air, missile and space command systems.

``Our first meetings with the Air Force are tomorrow,´´ said Judith Guss, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems in Gaithersburg, Md.

Lockheed beat TRW Inc. (NYSE:TRW - news) for the 15-year contract to meld about 40 systems into a single infrastructure aimed at giving U.S. forces a common, real-time view of events.

The company said one of the key challenges would be ``migrating´´ existing networks to the new architecture without disrupting operations at Cheyenne Mountain, where most systems of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) and U.S. Space Command are based.

The contract entails a giant systems integration job at the mountain complex near Colorado Springs, Colo., the likely nerve centre of any future U.S. national missile defence system.

The Cheyenne Mountain Operations Centre comprises the largest and most complex command and control network in the world.

The programme will also modernise the command and control systems of the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Space Command, the Air Force Space Command and other sites in the United States and abroad.

Lockheed and TRW were selected in February to head the two teams in the final phase of the face-off to build ``the system of systems´´ called Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2).

The Lockheed team includes Boeing Co., General Dynamics , GenCorp Aerojet, DynCorp Information Services, Wang Government Services and GTE. Currently, decision makers at Cheyenne Mountain and related locations must use vintage, stand-alone systems to piece together their view of threats. The new project is to improve ``interoperability´´ among the various systems.