Britain's Ministry of Defense has extended Lockheed Martin's contract to manage its inventory of equipment and spare parts.

The contract extension for the use of Lockheed Martin's Joint Asset Management and Engineering Solution, or JAMES, is for six years and is worth $28 million.

JAMES allows British military personnel to rapidly identify the status, availability, condition, ownership, location and quantity of equipment. It can also track how many miles a vehicle has been driven or how many shots a weapon has fired.

"I've seen the JAMES technology prove its worth time and again," said Group Capt. Andrew Mickleburgh, deputy head for the Ministry of Defense's Support Chain Information Services Transformation Projects. "It is seen as a force multiplier by the front-line command user community, and there is no doubt that the planning and decision support capability JAMES provides will show ever-increasing utility in the years ahead."

Britain's Ministry of Defense first contracted Lockheed Martin for JAMES in 2004. The system's software has since been upgraded to manage an increasingly complex portfolio.

Lockheed Martin says it now handles more than 10 million transactions every month.

JAMES is managed between a team based in Warminster in Wiltshire and a team in Orlando, Florida.