JADC2 visualization. (Lockheed Martin image)
SYDNEY — The competition for Australia’s All Domain AIR 6500 system quickened as Lockheed Martin announced plans this week for a new high-tech center to help its development effort on one of the country’s most ambitious weapons programs.
The new facility announcement followed rival Northrop Grumman Australia’s formal announcement that it submitted an official bid last week for what is mellifluously known here as AIR6500 Phase 1 Joint Air Battle Management System (JABMS), Competitive Evaluation Process Stage 2 (CEP2).
Close followers of the US Air Force’s All Domain efforts will recognize the similarities between the goals of its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) and the Air 6500 system. Both are intended to be All Domain systems feeding data to and from a wide range of sensors, as well as command control systems, to greatly speed decision making and responses. The Australian branches of Northrop and Lockheed were picked as the two final competitors for the award, expected some time next year.
Australia’s commitment to such a broad and complex system has drawn strong approval from US and Australian observers. Lockheed Australia feels strongly enough that it has invested more than $100 million of its own funding, company officials told reporters. It is a truly joint program and has been since the beginning, in contrast to the various programs pursued separately by each service in the United States.
Since the work has, so far, largely been done in Australia, and the source code appears to be all Australian, there is a reasonable possibility that the system could be sold to countries such as Singapore and South Korea to knit together the countries facing China to improve their command and control and sensor fusion.
To get some idea of how important this program is seen to be by the firms involved, Lockheed Martin Corp. flew its chief operations officer, Frank St. John, over for the final oral presentations to the Australian Department of Defense. Northrop, for its part, demonstrated its offering to the AIR6500’s program office in the Department of Defence in August.
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“Our Australian-led team brings Northrop Grumman’s best-of-breed, all-domain C2 technology from the US together with the best of Australian engineering,” Christine Zeitz, general manager of Northrop Grumman Asia-Pacific, said Oct. 13 in a statement. Northrop’s offer draws on the company’s all domain command and control expertise and experience developing and demonstrating the US Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), the company said.
Lockheed’s announcement Monday was about a $74 million AUD facility that will be modeled to some degree on its Lighthouse facility in Virginia, where it runs modeling and simulations, as well as war-games. Intriguingly, that facility is where the company ran several complex All Domain Operation war-games in the early stages of developing Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). The idea is to build a facility where modelling and simulation, testing and related activities can be done with at least the 20 Australian companies working with Lockheed’s AIR 6500 efforts, as well as with the Australian military.
A key part of the effort would be to build what Lockheed calls a “digital twin” of AIR 6500 with all of the security needed, since testing and upgrading such a system in the field would be difficult, the company said on Oct. 14 in a briefing for reporters.
Lockheed suggested establishing the site at RAAF Base Williamtown, but that decision isn’t formal. Also, it will probably be tied electronically to remote sites across Australia.
