Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC] Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) participated in a successful demonstration of fusing real-time data from a variety of sensors into a Single Integrated Air Picture (SIAP), the company said recently.
Sensors from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps were involved in the September proof-of- concept demonstration across laboratories in Huntsville, Ala., and Dahlgren, Va., and was connected by the Army’s Integrated Fire Control Network and the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability to form the SIAP. The demonstration involved eight radars and nine composite network nodes, which were able to process the measurement reports from all sensors to form the same SIAP.
The ICBS command and control system grew out of analysis of fratricide during Operation Iraqi Freedom and is intended to improve battlefield engagement of the enemy while helping to reduce accidental attacks on U.S. soldiers.
Northrop Grumman won the contract to develop IBCS in December 2009 for the Army Program Executive Office, Missiles and Space. The IBCS is designed to combine, common, continuous, unambiguous tracks of all airborne objects in the surveillance area so that joint military operations share a single graphical representation of the battlespace.