General Dynamics [GD] earlier this year delivered the first installment of the Integrated Wireless Network (IWN) to the Department of Justice (DoJ), providing various federal law enforcement agencies with a secure interoperable wireless communications system. The initial deployment consists of 15 towers in the Washington, D.C., area, called the National Capital Region (NCR). The deployment collapses 45 towers used and managed by various federal law enforcement agencies into the 15 to create an interoperable communications network for DoJ agencies such as the FBI, U.S. Marshals and Drug Enforcement Agency, the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, and the Interior Department’s Park Police. “The IWN program is designed to collapse all of the current communications systems” any time the various agencies need to work together,” James Norton, director of Homeland Security and Federal Strategies, tells TR2. “IWN puts federal law enforcement on the same interoperable network” with their different radios, he says. In the NCR, the IWN deployment supports about 3,500 federal law enforcement agents. GD is currently designing the next deployment which will expand coverage north to the Baltimore, Md., area and south to the Richmond, Va., area, supporting another 3,500 agents, he says. Eventually DoJ and its partners at Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security plan to roll out IWN in critical regions around the country. DoJ selected GD four years ago over Lockheed Martin [LMT] to design and deploy IWN. The two companies were previously selected over AT&T [ATT], Boeing [BA] and Motorola [MOT].