Lockheed Martin has secured a contract from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific to improve the US Navy’s command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) collection and dissemination capabilities.
Under the terms of the contract, which has a ceiling value of $35m over five years, the company will aim to improve how the navy exchanges C4ISR data through the space, air, surface, subsurface and unmanned sensor domains.
Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions C4ISR vice-president Dr Rob Smith: "For the navy, every platform is a sensor, and every sensor must be networked.
"We’ll leverage our … fielding signals intelligence systems to increase the navy’s intelligence sharing capability across the full spectrum of maritime and littoral missions."
Co-developed by Lockheed, the navy’s distributed-information operations system is said to address the service’s need for network-centric intelligence to improve interoperability and battlespace awareness.
Lockheed will integrate and deploy capabilities that continue to enhance the intelligence collection, data fusion and intelligence processing and dissemination capabilities of the navy.
The status of all sensors registered in the network will be monitored by these capabilities. The network will then display the input from those sensors to support real-time planning.
As part of the contract, Lockheed will also analyse methods to enhance the navy’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surface combatant land attacks.
