Defence company Marine and Remote Sensing Solutions (MARSS) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Nigerian Ministry of Defence (MoD) for its NiDAR Command and Control System, valued at $190 million.
The multi-year scheme will be among the largest national defence programmes commissioned in Africa, delivering an AI-powered shield to protect Nigeria’s critical infrastructure and borders against asymmetric threats, MARSS said in a statement earlier this month.
The MoU was signed in London on March 19, 2026 “to deliver Nigeria’s first fully integrated national defence architecture.” Under the agreement, MARSS will deliver its NiDAR AI-powered C4I (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence) solution along with a training, spares and support programme. A new national command centre will also be commissioned, featuring a Centre of Excellence to deliver ongoing training for Nigerian operators to maintain a high state of operational readiness.
Nigeria and the wider West African region face growing asymmetric threats from terrorism and organised insurgency. This programme will see MARSS working with its local partners to build sovereign capability, create a critical multi-domain defence architecture, and support the national security agencies in counter-terrorism operations, MARSS said.
“The UK and Nigeria share a deep, longstanding security and defence relationship. Signing this memorandum of understanding is a great example of our continued and strengthening partnership, with a British company able to deliver world leading, combat proven UK technology and defensive capabilities to support Nigeria’s fight against terrorism,” said the UK Minister for Defence at the House of Lords, Lord Vernon Coaker.
“The programme marks a significant commitment to one of the first national-scale adoptions of AI-enabled C4I in Africa,” MARSS said. The programme includes a fleet of expeditionary platforms, equipped with mixture of sensors and effectors meshed by MARSS’ NiDAR C4I system, and unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles, integrated into NiDAR via MARSS’ Autonomous Mission Management (AMM), enabling intelligent aerial reconnaissance in hostile and contested areas where it is unsafe to deploy ground resources.
New regional command centres and a national headquarters, networked to receive live sensor data from fixed legacy systems and the fleet of expeditionary platforms and UAVs, fused together by MARSS’ NiDAR Nation Shield, Edge to Mission Command (E2MC) capabilities, will deliver an integrated multi-domain air and land surveillance picture.
By integrating expeditionary vehicles, regional centres, and a national headquarters into a single tactical picture, the NiDAR system will be scalable and future-proofed, said Rob Balloch, Chief Growth Officer at MARSS.
AMM was unveiled in London in September 2025. It allows entirely autonomous missions to be conducted, according to Janes. In tests carried out in August 2025, one operator was able to oversee 10 unmanned aerial systems operating automatically, as per Janes. MARSS’ NiDAR Nation Shield and Edge to Mission Command (E2MC) systems will also be used to deliver air and land surveillance data.
“The support of the UK Government and our local and international partners has been a major factor in bringing this project together,” Balloch added. “It is a huge endorsement of the UK’s position as an AI defence technology leader, with the ability to deliver this critical capability at scale with confidence.”
NiDAR is already in operation across more than 60 sites globally – protecting military and critical infrastructure installations. “This latest contract is a further demonstration of how NiDAR’s AI-enabled C4I capability can be scaled to create a single, coherent operating picture from tactical deployments right through to strategic, national-level command,” MARSS said.
