Officials of the U.S. Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., announced a $67 million order Tuesday to the Northrop Grumman Mission Systems segment in Huntsville, Ala., for long-lead-time materials on the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).
The IBCS is to be a revolutionary air command-and-control (C2) system to help air and missile defenders make quick decisions and adapt quickly to changing battlefield conditions.
Long-lead items either are difficult and time-consuming to obtain, and are funded early in the aircraft design process to keep overall production on schedule. Contracts to build and deploy the IBCS will come later.
The IBCS helps enhance aircraft and missile tracking and situational awareness to enable combatant commanders and air defenders to make critical decisions within seconds in response to air and missile attacks, Northrop Grumman officials say.
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The IBCS represents a modular open-systems architecture to optimize limited resources and facilitate flexible defense designs, company officials say.
The IBCS enables commanders to tailor organizations, sensors, and weapons to meet the demands of diverse missions, environments, and rules of engagement not achievable today, Northrop Grumman officials say. It provides wide-area surveillance and broad protection areas by networking sensors and interceptors.
The IBCS is to replace seven legacy command-and-control systems with network-centric battle management to reduce single points of failure and increase the flexibility for deploying small force packages. The system creates a standard approach across forces to reduce logistics burdens and change training.
The system enables affordable integration of current and future sensors, weapons, and modernization efforts, and helps connect systems for joint and cooperative multinational missile defense.
On this order Northrop Grumman will do the work in Huntsville, Ala., and should be finished by March 2019. For more information contact Northrop Grumman Mission Systems online at www.northropgrumman.com, or the Army Contracting Command-Redstone at http://acc.army.mil/contractingcenters/acc-rsa.
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