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Boeing Defence Australia has signed a contract for the delivery of comms elements of Australia’s upcoming AIR6500 ‘missile shield’.
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It comes after Lockheed Martin beat Northrop Grumman last year to win the $765 million contract to revolutionise how Australia monitors and shoots down incoming missiles, also known as the ‘Joint Air Battle Management System’.
The latest announcement means Boeing will work with rival Lockheed, with the former providing the hardware and software for voice and data services.
The technology will be based on capabilities developed for Boeing’s Currawong Battlespace Communications System, which is currently in service with the Australian Defence Force.
According to a release from BDA, the company’s distributed network system is already in service with the Australian Defence Force. It includes several transmission options, such as Wideband Global Satellite to fibre to public networks, and management and networking software.
BDA has already embedded a team within Lockheed Martin Australia to support preliminary works on this critical program.
“This subcontract further cements our position as an industry-leading developer of deployable communications systems and demonstrates the value that defence industry partnerships bring to solving the ADF’s complex problems,” Murray Brabrook, BDA Joint Systems director said.
“Working collaboratively across industry ensures we achieve what matters most – connecting and protecting the warfighter and doing this more quickly than one organisation could do in isolation.”
Kendall Kuczma, international business development director at Lockheed Martin Australia and New Zealand, added that the partnership will deliver next-generation communications technology into AIR6500 to support Australian interests.
“We are delighted to join forces with BDA to integrate cutting-edge communication technologies into AIR6500,” Kuczma said.
“I commend BDA’s engineers who, from day one, hit the ground running on AIR6500. The team has embraced the agile architecture of AIR6500 by leveraging the backbone of the Currawong Battlespace Communications technology and advancing it to provide an efficient and accelerated path to capability for the ADF.
“As we progress, Lockheed Martin Australia is committed to leveraging the full might of Australian industry to build a transformational capability, underpinned by best-of-breed sovereign technologies, that can be trusted to defend Australia and its national interests now and in the future.”
