Lockheed Martin has been awarded up to $1.1bn to develop an integrated combat system to combine US Navy and Coast Guard warships

The US Navy has allocated funds to Lockheed Martin for the development of an integrated combat system. The amount may exceed $1bn.

Here's What We Know

The new integrated combat system is designed to unite the ships of the US Navy and the US Coast Guard. Lockheed Martin has received $23m so far, but if all options are exercised, the contract value will increase to $1.1bn by 2030.

The US Navy released the request for proposals last May. Lockheed Martin was one of two companies that responded. A statement from the US Department of Defence did not mention the second bidder.

The military service intends to have a single combat system that will unify ships in the future. Right now destroyers, missile cruisers and littoral ships have different variants of the Aegis system developed by Lockheed Martin. In the future, it will appear on frigates and unmanned surface ships. Landing ships and aircraft carriers use a separate self-defence system. It is developed by Raytheon and operated by Lockheed Martin.

A single combat system will increase the speed of adoption of new capabilities across the fleet and reduce the cost of management. To achieve the goal, the U.S. Navy has launched separate hardware and software development projects. This separation will allow individual components to be updated independently of each other as technology and budget constraints evolve.

Lockheed Martin was able to digitise the Aegis combat system. It can now be run from a small computer without the need for the huge equipment that is installed on ships. The virtualisation of Aegis made it possible to connect the combat system to unmanned surface ships to launch missiles. It has also become the heart of the new Typhon land-based platform, which can launch Tomahawk and Standard Missile 6.

Source: Defence News