Historically, adding more warfighting capacity meant fielding more assets, but the world had changed. With increasingly complex operations, adding more assets will not enable scaling fast enough to outpace the threat. Countering that threat also demands a truly integrated approach across domains and coalition partners. Northrop Grumman has responded to this capability gap by building on its proven command and control technologies like the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) to deliver one battlespace, integrated across all domains and coalition partners to enable commanders to see and act on an integrated view of sensors and shooters.
Northrop Grumman’s Don Fryc, business development manager, sees this as “paradigm changing.” Fryc was a 34-year career U.S. Army Air Defender that culminated with him serving as the Commanding General of 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command. Thinking back to his first assignment as a Stinger team chief leading a two-person unit with two radios to provide situational awareness, he believes that “the change Northrop Grumman is making with the IBCS-connected battlespace is the Army’s equivalent of moving from the horse to the tank – it is that transformational.” Fryc further explains, “Northrop Grumman is delivering today on our vision of a battlespace where the fight is fundamentally changed by integrating air and missile defense to deliver a decision advantage through a multi-national and multi-domain battlespace, allowing warfighters make faster, more accurate, joint decisions to defeat any threat.”
This company vision, known as BattleOneTM, draws upon Northrop Grumman’s proven battle management capabilities, offering warfighters scale and flexibility to meet the needs of their unique mission. IBCS serves as a fundamental element with its ability to unify all sensors and effectors in the battlespace, allowing the most effective weapon to take out the threat. IBCS is proven, mature and ready to enable this vision of a connected battlespace.
IBCS connects multi-service and multi-national sensors and effectors, never designed to work together, into one command and control system so warfighters can see and act on data across the entire battlefield more rapidly. The integration it provides is the cornerstone of modern air and missile defense modernization strategy, having the ability to replace multiple, current air and missile defense command and control systems with a single system. This integrated network created by IBCS enables revolutionary multi-domain, any sensor, best effector operations.
“Through modular, open and scalable architectures, we give warfighters capabilities they never had before by fusing data, expanding the battlespace and extending the capability of existing assets,” said Rebecca Torzone, vice president and general manager, combat systems and mission readiness, Northrop Grumman. “Northrop Grumman is delivering ready and proven capabilities that make it affordable for our customers to modernize the way they connect sensors and effectors across domains and partners.”
With IBCS, the future of command and control across the spectrum of sensors and effectors is unlocked through the ability to provide an open, modular and scalable architecture that is foundational in deploying a truly integrated network of all available assets, regardless of source, service or domain to achieve an operational advantage. Ready today, warfighters are able to receive and see information through a single, actionable view of the fight, allowing them to make informed decisions across the entire battlespace and ultimately, respond more swiftly.
“Coming from a family of soldiers to being a soldier for 34 years and now being a father of soldiers, I want an unfair fight where the U.S. and its coalition partners have the advantage where they are more informed, more lethal, and more capable against anyone, anywhere, anytime, and anyplace,” Fryc explains. “With IBCS, we are giving warfighters capabilities they never had before, by providing data from across the entire battlespace and rapidly creating solutions to defend against or defeat any threat, and that comforts me in knowing that we will go into the next fight with leaders and equipment that will make it that unfair fight.”