By Ann Roosevelt
Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Command and Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC) system for national missile defense is preparing to go operational with the latest version while planning for the next iteration, a company official said.
Last year saw much testing of the new delivery of Spiral 6.4 C2BMC, the critical software, hardware, and network connectivity needed to operate the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is building.
“The 6.4 baseline adds many new capabilities to our C2BMC capability suite…(and) we’ve been working with all the warfighters at the combatant commands to roll that out,” John Osborn, director, Missile Defense Systems Unit, Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions-Defense, said at a March 21 luncheon with reporters.
“At the end of May, early June, we’re prepared to present that to the agency for operational approval,” he said at a luncheon at the annual American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics missile defense conference in Washington.
Earlier this year, MDA said it planned a sole source award to the Lockheed Martin-led National Team B for C2BMC support for worldwide fielded capabilities in a Feb. 3 fbodaily.com notice. The award also is for the work the program will do to deliver new capabilities.
In 2011, Osborn said the program “will be addressing the proposal for the five-year follow on” for Spiral 8.2 design.
Spiral 8.2 is not fully defined, but is expected to improve and expand on Spiral 6.4 with the addition of such things as boost phase precision cue, engagement assessment and recommendations as well as implementing the common X-band interface as part of the move toward integrated sensor management, according to the Fiscal Year 2010 Director, Operational Test and Evaluation annual report.
With cyber attacks continually on the rise, Osborne said security for the vital missile defense system is paramount. The program already runs on the government-provided Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), but that’s “not sufficient by itself.”
“What we’ve done is we’ve deployed a very robust architecture in terms of cyber defense,” Osborn said. “Not only do we have multiple firewalls, we have something called defense in depth where even though we’re sitting behind the government’s protected network we have multiple firewalls that we separate mission critical data from administrative data but we also monitor that with what’s called Network Operations Center that we run out of Colorado Springs,(Colo.).”
The operations center runs 24/7 constantly monitoring the networks.
“In the event of an attack we can do denial of service, we can reroute, we can stop and engage whatever kind of threat we’re observing at the time,” Osborn said. “It’s something the agency has given us a lot of support on and fortunately we’ve been very creative in supporting.”