U.S. Army, Lockheed Martin to Develop Space-Enabled Defense Systems

Lockheed Martin signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Aviation and Missile Center (AvMC) today to advance Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) connectivity.

Under this CRADA, Lockheed Martin and AvMC will jointly develop and demonstrate space-enabled defense systems.

Through this CRADA, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Army will conduct design, development, integration, and test risk reduction activities utilizing AvMC’s Redstone Arsenal, Alabama-based System Integration Lab (SIL) to identify and develop concepts of operations for linking ground-based platforms to the space domain.

The team will investigate capabilities that improve satellite communications (SATCOM) to defense systems, identify overlapping capabilities that can facilitate connectivity, look for capability gaps, conduct hardware-in-the-loop tests, test the connectivity between platforms at various speeds, explore ancillary use of communications systems and more.

As work begins, the team will leverage the SIL for its integration, test and analysis tools to support evolving prototypes. The SIL’s advanced modeling and simulation tool suite will enable the team to accelerate the delivery of experimental prototypes and align technical performers across government agencies and industry.