Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) Network

The Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System’s enhanced aircraft and missile tracking improves the ability of combatant commanders and air defenders to make critical decisions within seconds. With its truly open systems architecture, IBCS enables integration of current and future sensors and weapon systems and interoperability with joint C2 and the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

TheIBCS is going to be ready in the next couple of months. The US Army radar is designed and manufactured to be a native to the IBCS network. With Patriot and Sentinel, there are these adaptation kits that will adapt those radars and those shooters to the IBCS integratedfire controlnetwork. Those kits are not required with this radar: It is being designed and optimized specifically to operate in that network.

Key Features

• Use composite track data from multiple sensors to create a single, integrated air picture
• Acquire, classify, identify, assign, engage, and kill incoming threats systems
• Select the best available weapon for the threat
• Create task forces and teams that are flexible, scalable, and adaptable to rapidly changing situations and environments
• Allows IAMD soldiers to engage threats more intuitively rather than being restricted by particular unit capabilities

The Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) is the future command and control system for U.S. Army air defense assets. It is intended is to integrate the communications between weapon launchers, radars, and the operators, allowing an air defense unit, such as a Patriot battery, to fire its interceptors using information provided by the radar of another.

In some cases, this integration will permit an Army air defense unit to defend a larger area, as the unit’s engagement zone will be less limited by the view of its own organic radar. It will also reduce the chance of interceptor wastage, by reducing the chance that two or more air defense units will engage the same target. Once deployed, IBCS will take the place of seven other Army command and control systems currently in use.

IBCS is integrating Patriot air and missile defense systems and the Sentinel sensor. IBCS will integrate soon with the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). The system was also designed to incorporate other sensor systems such as Surface-Launched Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (SLAMRAAM) and Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS), but these programs have since been discontinued.

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