ThalesRaytheonSystems, a joint venture between Raytheon [RTN] and Thales Group, recently announced it successfully completed its latest in a series of tests of the NATO Air Command and Control System Level of Operational Capability 1 (ACCS LOC 1).

A modern air operations and management system, ACCS LOC 1 also is NATO’s largest ever software development scheduled for replication across NATO over the next five years. When fully deployed, all ACCS entities will use the same system of hardware and software and will share operational data over a fully-integrated, high-speed communications network.

The System Test 1-1 was a three-week event witnessed by the NATO ACCS Management Agency. The test involved live and simulated conditions and data exchanges among external sensors, data links and NATO command and control units at the NATO ACCS System Test and Validation Facility (STVF) in Glons, Belgium and other NATO sites.

The test following six months of preparation was the first to be carried out at the STVF after a successful factory system test phase at TRS facilities in Massy, France.

Featuring more than 50 test cases, thousands of individual steps, and countless processing hours, ST1-1 was the first in a series of on-site critical tests planned for NATO ACCS LOC 1.

Following a second test at the Glons facility scheduled at the end of 2010, the NATO ACCS LOC 1 software will be installed in four validation sites including Belgium, France, Germany and Italy, and tested in a standalone entity configuration.

A final phase will test all validation sites simultaneously in a fully integrated ACCS configuration.

Designed to replace NATO’s existing air command and control systems, the NATO ACCS LOC 1 software by Air Command Systems International, a ThalesRaytheonSystems company, uses open-system architecture to adapt to changing operational requirements such as theater missile defense and network-centric warfare.