US Army awards Northrop Grumman $1 billion contract for Integrated Battle Command System

News, US January 5, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

The U.S. Army awarded defense firm, Northrop Grumman, a contract of more than $1 billion for the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) production, Northrop Grumman Corporation announced on January 3.

Under the five-year contract for the low-rate initial production and full-rate production of the IBCS, Northrop Grumman will produce and field Command System and provide product engineering and logistics support for the United States and select allied forces through foreign military sales, the release said.

Corporate vice president and president at the Northrop Grumman Defense Systems, Mary Petryszyn said “IBCS a centerpiece of the U.S. Army’s modernization strategy for air and missile defense to address the changing battlefield.”

“Working closely with the Army, we look forward to leveraging the IBCS architecture to create an all-domain command and control capability,” Petryszyn added.

IBCS’s “resilient, open, modular and scalable” architecture enables the efficient and affordable integration of current and future systems, and it is foundational to integrating all available assets in the battlespace, regardless of source, service, or domain, the Northrop Grumman release read. “Through numerous, successful flight tests, IBCS has validated the ability to connect and fuse multi-service sensor data to multi-service weapons demonstrating JADC2 [Joint All-Domain Command and Control] capabilities,” it added.

According to the Northrop Grumman release, “the program has undergone extensive hardware-in-the-loop environmental, live fire, and developmental testing and has participated in numerous Joint Service and U.S. Army exercises,” after the company delivered the first IBCS to the U.S. Army. “The current award follows the program’s recent flight test which integrated multi-domain systems across the services and the decision by the Department of Defense authorizing IBCS to proceed into low rate initial production as a result of the successful Limited User Test,” the news release read.

^{Northrop Grumman integrated the widest variety of sensors to date on the Integrated Fire Control Network for an IBCS test, including one Marine Corps Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar, two Army Sentinel radars, one Army Patriot radar, and two U.S. Air Force F-35 fighter aircraft.}

Earlier in July 2021, the U.S. Army engaged a cruise missile target in a highly contested electronic attack environment during a developmental flight test using the Northrop Grumman Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System.

According to the Northrop Gruman release, the flight test incorporated “live testing and demonstration of a Joint Track Manager Capability which provided a bridge between IBCS and the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability, enabling the sharing of G/ATOR [Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar] track data on the IBCS Integrated Fire Control Network. With support from Lockheed Martin, the flight test architecture also incorporated two F-35 combat aircraft integrated on the IFCN with on board sensors contributing to the IBCS developed joint composite track used to perform the engagement.”