Navy awards $35 million project to improve C4ISR data sharing Defence and Security

The Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to boost the service’s C4ISR info exchange capabilities, from its multitude of sensors.

According to Lockheed Martin’s release, the indefinite quantity/indefinite delivery contract with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific with a contract value around $35 million over five years, and would improvise the way Navy’s space, air, surface, subsurface and unmanned sensors would gather and disperse data.

The Navy’s Information Dominance system command SPAWAR is responsible for the development of communications and information competence for warfighters.

Lockheed originally co-developed, the Navy’s Distributed Information Operations System, was developed to enhance interoperability and project battlespace awareness through network centric intelligence, and links a variety of signals intelligence systems for diplomatic data exchange.

Taking advantage of its experience with DIO-S, Lockheed may get engaged to implement a monitoring system proficient of checking the statuses of all the sensors registered in its network in the future. The same system would then display the input from the sensors for a real time planning.

Cross-cueing and cooperative sensing, as well as automated target recognition, will be allowed with the further assimilation of the sensors. The contract details also covers possible improvements of the Navy’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles for ground attacks.

The Distributed Common Ground System are also co-developed by Lockheed Martin, which seeks to integrate multiple intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors from different services and agencies into a common network. The DCGS-N, Navy’s version, is the services primary ISR&T (the “T” is for Targeting) support system and facilitates processing, exploitation, and dissemination capabilities for the operational and strategic level.