Lockheed Martin [LMT] and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have completed successful tests of the company’s ‘Einstein Box’ which allows secure, rapid data integration across air, ground, space and cyber mission systems in contested environments, officials announced Friday.
The flight tests, conducted at the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., demonstrated data interoperability between a ground station, a flying test bed and a C-12 aircraft.
Skunk Works, Lockheed’s advanced development team, performed the tests as part of DARPA’s System of Systems Integration Technology and Experimentation (SoSITE) program.
“Demonstrating rapid and affordable integration of mission systems into existing and new architectures, SoSITE will help U.S. forces maintain their advantage in today’s dynamic world,” Lockheed officials said in a statement.
The test used Einstein Box, also known as Enterprise Open System Architecture Mission Computer version 2, to provide secure connections between the systems. The data was then transmitted between the STITCHES integration technology.
“The successful demonstrations focused on advancing integration technologies to increase capabilities of systems in operation today, enabling our warfighters to use those systems in unexpected ways,” Justin Taylor, Lockheed Skunk Works director of mission systems roadmaps, said in a statement. “The SoS approach is essential for allowing U.S. forces to rapidly reconfigure systems and prevail over any threat.”
The latest tests demonstrated Einstein Box’s ability automatically compose and transmit messages between systems, to link ground-based cockpit simulators with live aircraft systems in real time and integration between the APG-81 radar and DARPA’s Automatic Target Recognition Software, according to Lockheed.
Partners on the Lockheed Skunk Works effort included the company’s missiles and fire control division, Northrop Grumman [NOC], BAE Systems, General Dynamics [GD], Rockwell Collins [COL], Apogee Research and Phoenix Flight Test.