Hypersonic detection goal of battle management system upgrade
NewsAugust 11, 2021
BETHESDA, Md. The Missile Defense Agency has awarded Lockheed Martin a $157 million contract to augment the Command, Control, Battle Management & Communications' (C2BMC) engagement support capability for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system that protects the U.S. from long-range ballistic missile attacks.
According to the company, the GMD system includes silo-based interceptors, connections to sensors on land and sea, distributed fire control, and launch support systems. Currently, the GMD system engages a threat using single-source data from multiple radars.
The next upgrade to C2BMC, called Spiral 8.2-7, will aim to provide GMD with a single, real-time, composite picture of threat system tracks by correlating and fusing data from a broader set of sensors, including satellites and ground- and ship-based radars.
Once the spiral upgrade is complete, officials claim the GMD system will see the same battlespace picture currently seen by combatant commanders. Additionally, Spiral 8.2-7 will also enable C2BMC to report hypersonic threat activity onto the Link 16 military tactical data link network and display to the operators.
