Northrop Grumman [NOC] yesterday delivered the 500th Command Post Platform (CPP) shelter system to the Army during a ceremony at the company’s Huntsville, Ala. facility.
“This accomplishment is a tribute to the CPP team’s continuing focus on program excellence,” said Phil Coker, director, Integrated Platform Solutions, Northrop Grumman Information Systems. “Their unwavering dedication to quality and meeting commitments has produced a reliable system that’s successfully being used by our troops today. As a team, we have developed a standardized shelter infrastructure that can be used for many different roles and missions. Our approach has reduced overall life-cycle program cost and increased system agility allowing the warfighter to respond quickly to the ever-changing battlefield environment, both today and tomorrow.”
The current contract, valued at $504 million over six years, was awarded to Northrop Grumman Information Systems sector in August 2004.
To meet the Army’s urgent demand for the CPP, the Northrop Grumman team stood up a development and integration facility in Huntsville where the CPP shelters are built.
The CPP provides common digitized command centers with advanced command and control technologies to give commanders improved situational awareness using Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade-and-Below software and other Army automated battlefield-command systems. This standardized command post system will also allow operators and staff to move between organizational echelons without the need for retraining.
As the CPP prime contractor, Northrop Grumman is responsible for developing and fielding Army tactical command posts, from which commanders and staff direct battle operations and control forces.
Since deliveries commenced in October 2005, the Northrop Grumman team has consistently delivered the vehicles on-cost and ahead of schedule, the company said.
The CPP team is scheduled to deliver 180 more shelters to the Army by August 2010.
The team’s products are the first to address a comprehensive set of Army command post requirements with a standard, multi-mission capable design. The Northrop Grumman CPP program has created a highly mobile, survivable, battle command capability that enables soldiers to create a fully mission capable Tactical Operations Center within a very short period of time, in virtually any environment.
The Project Manager, Tactical Operations Centers in Madison, Ala., manages the CPP program for the Program Executive Officer, Command, Control, Communications (Tactical), Fort Monmouth, N.J.
Northrop Grumman’s associated efforts include special studies, vehicle platform engineering, training, and exercise and test support. This allows flexibility for investigating promising technologies, as well as working with other Army and joint program offices and government customers to realign their command post/command-and-control shelters to integrate standardized CPP capabilities.
Key program partners include Azbell Electronics, Waco, Texas; L-3 Communications [LLL]; Tobyhanna Army Depot, Tobyhanna, Pa.; Applied Minds, Glendale, Calif.; Natural Interactive Systems, Portland, Ore.; Gichner Shelter Systems, Dallastown, Pa.; Harris Corp. [HRS], Palm Bay Fla.; and Adept Technologies [ADEP], Sanmina-SCI [SANM], Schafer Corp., and Colsa Corp., all of Hunstville.