Northrop Grumman has won a US Army contract for low-rate initial production (LRIP) and full-rate production (FRP) of the integrated battle command system (IBCS).
The five-year contract, which was awarded late last month, is valued at over $1bn.
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It will see Northrop Grumman produce and field the IBCS, as well as provide product engineering and logistics support for the US and specific allied partners via foreign military sales (FMS).
Jointly developed by the US Army and Northrop, the IBCS is a software-defined and hardware-enabled system. It is the future command and control (C2) system for US Army air defence assets.
The IBCS features resilient, open, modular, and scalable architecture. It can integrate all available assets into the battlespace.
The system’s architecture also allows for efficient and affordable integration of existing and future systems.
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By GlobalDataThe company noted that the IBCS has the ability to ‘connect and fuse’ multi-service sensor information to multi-service weapons, showcasing joint all-domain command and control (JADC2) capabilities during several flight tests.
Northrop Grumman Defence Systems corporate vice-president and president Mary Petryszyn said: “The IBCS is a centrepiece of the US Army’s modernisation strategy for air and missile defence 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.”
Northrop has already delivered the first IBCS to the US Army.
Since then, the programme underwent hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) environmental, live fire, and developmental testing procedures, and took part in several joint service and US Army drills.
The latest award follows the IBCS programme’s flight test that took place in July last year.
During this flight test, multi-domain systems were integrated across the services and a decision was made by the DoD authorising the IBCS to proceed into LRIP because of the ‘Limited user test’.
In December 2021, Northrop Grumman announced the opening of its new laboratory Parallax Labs in Australia.
