Developed in partnership with Northrop Grumman, the Integrated Battle Command System, or IBCS, is the beating heart of the U.S. Army’s future air and missile defense architecture. Calling IBCS transformative is an understatement – its capabilities have the potential to totally transform how the U.S. Army defends the skies, enhancing both legacy and new weapons systems.
Northrop Grumman’s William “Bill” Lamb, a former U.S. Army air defense officer, acquisition official, and now the company’s operating unit director of Global Mission Command and Control, sat down to give us an expansive inside look at the latest IBCS developments, explaining how the system works and about its evolving capabilities.
But first, a quick overview of IBCS and why it’s so critical to the Army’s future ability to modernize air and missile defense.
What is IBCS?
The IBCS command and control system is designed from the ground-up to deal with the complexities of the modern battlespace, where warfighters must sift through critical data and make rapid engagement decisions. This system networks with current and future sensors and weapons platforms – regardless of source, service, or domain – to create an integrated fire control network that identifies and engages air and missile threats. Its modular, open and scalable architecture allows users a sensor-fused, highly accurate, rapidly actionable ‘picture’ of the full battlespace.
IBCS tackles evolving air and missile threats, from incoming drone swarms to hypersonic weapons, while creating a ‘any sensor, best shooter’ strategy. This enables operators to select the optimal effector for the situation.
Since 2015, the IBCS program has successfully executed multiple developmental and operational flight tests under increasingly realistic conditions, including early engineering to integrate the U.S. Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) to the IBCS Integrated Fire Control Network (IFCN). The joint multi-domain command-and-control provided by IBCS, along with its data integration and distribution capabilities, make it a pillar of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) vision. IBCS’s capability to fuse data from joint service sensors to create and distribute a single integrated air picture is particularly key.
Follow-on operational test and evaluation (FOT&E) of IBCS is planned for 2025, before deployment to active-duty Army units.
TWZ: IBCS pulls in a multitude of information, forms a common picture, neutralizes multiple threats. Can you walk us through its design and capabilities?
Lamb: Let me start off with a description of the threat and how it’s continuing to evolve, because that lays the groundwork for how IBCS is designed and why it’s designed the way it is.
Today’s battlespace is complex, ranging from ground-based threats like rockets, mortars, and artillery, collectively called RAM, to low-flying fast attack aircraft and cruise missiles that employ terrain avoidance and maneuver to avoid detection. We’re also seeing the prolific employment of drones, as seen in Ukraine, posing new challenges in countering drone swarms. You also have ballistic missiles that are flying inside and outside of the atmosphere, and then increasingly there’s the threat from very fast hypersonic missiles. The challenge lies in detecting and optimally engaging these diverse threats with all available defense systems.
Over the years, the U.S. Army has made significant investments in systems like Patriot, which is a medium-range air defense system, and THAAD, which is a system for intercepting short, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. These systems were traditionally designed to be tightly coupled between the command-and-control [C2], the sensors, and the effectors, making interoperability with other systems very difficult.
IBCS’s big idea is a network-enabled, Modular Open System Approach [MOSA]-designed command-and-control architecture, which essentially componentizes systems like Patriot. Meaning you remove the command and control – and then adapt the sensor [the Patriot radar] and adapt the launcher effector onto an integrated fire-control network.
The IBCS architecture integrates various sensors and effectors into a unified network. It is capable of collecting data from across the domains of ground, air, maritime, and space, to create a single integrated air picture that identifies all inbound threats.
TWZ: Just to follow up on that, around the small unmanned aerial system (UAS) threat and the means to defeat that, is it something that can easily be added to IBCS?
Lamb: The architecture absolutely supports this level of integration. To be clear, it’s not currently a capability that IBCS features, but the Army plans to integrate all of its available sensors and effector systems onto this single fire-control network over time.
For example, FAAD C2 [Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control] is a Northrop Grumman system that’s in the Army inventory and is deployed for short-range air defense in U.S. Army divisions is not yet fully integrated with IBCS, but the Army plan is to migrate that capability such that Army Air Defense Forces operate and employ IBCS as a single C2 system. That command-and-control capability for engaging small UAS’ resides within FAAD C2, and it’s not currently resident in IBCS but it will come under IBCS and FAAD C2 convergence.
One of the really powerful aspects of IBCS is that once fully fielded to the Army, new soldiers entering the service will be trained on the system and will be able to go their entire career and not have to retrain on other air and missile defense systems because IBCS will be the single C2 system for Army air missile defense.
I would add that there’s still work that the Army has to do surrounding integration of sensors for that short-range air defense mission and the counter-UAS mission. If you have a drone inbound that you’ve acquired and detected with a sensor, you don’t want to shoot that $500 drone down with a multi-million dollar Patriot interceptor, it needs an effect that’s more tailored to that threat. There is a lot of work being done with lasers and RF [Radiofrequency] energy to defeat those kinds of threats more economically.
TWZ: Is IBCS able to link with other systems, like the SM-6 medium-range missile?
Lamb: On Northrop Grumman investment, we are currently working with Raytheon on the engineering to integrate the SM-6 with IBCS and have successfully demonstrated simulated engagements during tests and exercises. The Army’s Medium Range Capability (MRC) program incorporates the SM-6 missile for strike. The IBCS open systems architecture is designed to be scalable and extensible, such that with additional development and investment it could perform both defensive and offensive missions. We are continuing to invest in research and development to explore these adjacent missions.
TWZ: How does IBCS work, what is the basic layout, and how does it link to other systems and have them on its network?
Lamb: There are essentially three major equipment items in IBCS. There’s the Engagement Operations Center [EOC], which you can think of as a shelter that mounts on the back of a five-ton truck and it’s got an antenna mast and has the communications onboard. The EOC is where the soldiers plan and fight the battle. This remotes into something that we call the Integrative Collaborative Environment [ICE], which is essentially a standard Army AirBeam tent. The ICE is where soldiers plan and fight the air battle. IBCS provides for remoting up to 10 operator workstations into the ICE. Within the EOC, you have two operator workstations which affords the capability for operators to employ and fight the system while the ICE is being established.
The Army plans to deploy IBCS with six EOCs in a battalion and 12 mobile fire control network relays. The IFCN relay forms the network and serves as the interface point for adapting sensors and weapons to the network. The Army’s force structure provides for 12 per battalion that are distributed across the battlefield. Each fire control network relay has a large 30-meter antenna mast, radios, and computing power. The network architecture is resilient and robust. It is designed such that every EOC on the network maintains the same air picture, and so if you lose one or more of the EOCs on the network, you can continue to fight the battle.
Today, with a standard U.S. Army Patriot, if you lose the Engagement Control Station at the battery level, then that battery is out of action. So culturally, this is a big change. Patriot was designed in the 1970s and was fielded in the 1980s, so employment thinking is still dominated by experience with Patriot. IBCS genuinely changes the paradigm for deploying whole battalions through its network architecture design that enables tailoring to enable employment of air and missile defense task forces. This means that rather than deploying a complete Patriot battalion, a commander could deploy a task force encompassing multiple types of sensors and effectors tailored for a specific mission. This provides commanders with a high degree of operational flexibility.
It’s also worth underlining the power of this open systems architecture. Traditionally, to perform a PAC-3 missile engagement, the uplink to the missile has to be performed through the radar. That’s very limiting because it means you have to deploy launchers in a position where they’re in proximity to the radar to be able to affect that uplink. This means you’re effectively constraining the range of the missile and the battlespace for performing engagements.
The Army has developed a capability called Remote Interceptor Guidance 360, or RIG-360, which is essentially an antenna uplink device that can be positioned at various locations on the battlefield. It removed the need to physically tether launchers and effectors to the location of the radar, so it’s an additional decoupling and dependency from a sensor.
To give you a sense of how powerful that is, in a U.S. Army test at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, in November 2023, the Army employed a cruise missile surrogate target against a test architecture encompassing IBCS integrated with three Sentinel short-range surveillance radars, a PAC-3 launcher and missile, and RIG-360. The Sentinel radar was not designed to work with the Patriot system but has been integrated with IBCS. It is important to note that there was no Patriot radar in the architecture to support the engagement. IBCS leveraged the data from the three Sentinel radars to develop the fire-control solution to perform a successful PAC-3 missile intercept of the cruise missile with an uplink from the RIG-360. That’s really powerful.
TWZ: How does IBCS connect and share data with other C2 systems to form an even larger network?.
Lamb: IBCS is designed to communicate with other platforms and command-and control systems across a number of data links to include Link 16 datalink and MADL [Multifunction Advanced Data Link]. In flight testing, IBCS has demonstrated the capability to integrate with F-35. In addition, one of the engineering initiatives the Army has pursued with the Missile Defense Agency, and which we have supported, is a bridging technology known as the Joint Track Management Capability, or JTMC bridge.
The U.S. Navy has a very similar kind of system like IBCS called Cooperative Engagement Capability [CEC]. CEC takes data from multiple platforms, such as SPY-6 radar on AEGIS-class ships, E-2D Hawkeye, U.S. Marine Corps’ G/ATOR radar [AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar], and and integrates the data to create a high-fidelity quality track that is distributed across the network. The bridge enables the passing of data back and forth between the two networks to create a single integrated air picture.
TWZ: How does IBCS physically connect to the distributed systems at long ranges, and how might it plug into JADC2 in the future?
Lamb: IBCS is capable of being connected over long distances via fiber optics and satellite communications. We’ve demonstrated its ability to link with airborne platforms and sensors across various domains, with data displayed in command centers thousands of miles away.
JADC2 is aimed at joint force integration, and IBCS is the Army’s contribution to this vision.
TWZ: IBCS is Poland’s choice for its NAREW short-range air defense program and phase two of the WISŁA medium-range air defense program, which provides one of the most potent air and missile defense capabilities in Europe, as well as interoperability with U.S. forces. Are you seeing more international interest in IBCS?
Lamb: Global conflicts are fueling recognition for the need to meet the increasing complexity of the air and ballistic missile threat and the need to defeat drones and other new, emerging threats. When you think of all the countries that have acquired the venerable U.S. Patriot system, which is up to around 19 nations now including the U.S., the way that this system can be upgraded is through the acquisition of the latest PAC-3 missile, or with IBCS as the command-and-control system. We are seeing significant interest in IBCS from allies and partners that have acquired and employ Patriot within their armed forces.
We’re also working with Diehl Defence in Germany on the IRIS-T SLM. We can integrate with Germany’s legacy command-and-control system and with IRIS-T, and, and then obviously with Patriot that they also operate.
Poland was an early adopter of IBCS. They made a decision to acquire it in 2017 and we were on contract in 2019 as part of a project for IBCS and Patriot, and we’re fully delivered. We anticipate that they’ll declare Initial Operational Capability for IBCS this year. In February 2024, they also decided to acquire IBCS for their short-range air defense program and they are buying the MBDA CAMM [Common Anti-air Modular Missile] missile system for that mission. We completed some work with MBDA a few years ago performing prototype integration of IBCS with CAMM.
Overall, Poland is a large acquisition, targeting five squadrons of IBCS and Patriot for WISŁA and something on the order of 23 batteries for their NAREW short-range air defense system, equating to the largest air missile defense force within NATO when it’s fully delivered. Poland recognized the transformational capability of network-enabled open systems architecture that IBCS affords.
TWZ: Can you provide an update on the overall status of the IBCS program?
Lamb: We have been delivering low-rate initial production MEIs [major end items] since December 2023, and they are manufactured at our Huntsville manufacturing facility. We were just placed on contract a few months ago for full rate production and we’re in the process of developing the proposal for a production program in 2025 as part of the Army’s annual procurement of IBCS.
The LRIP MEIs will be fielded initially to a U.S. Army battalion that is designated to support U.S. Army testing of IBCS and other systems in development. Fielding to the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, is planned for 2025 as is the start of fielding of the three IBCS battalions to the active force.
Follow-on test and evaluation [FOT&E] is planned for the summer of 2025. That will be a full blown operational test incorporating the same testing methodology used during initial operational test and evaluation in 2022. They test a fully-trained IBCS unit that can employ and maintain the system, and that is trained on the tactics, techniques, and procedures to use it. It includes live air testing and integrated flight tests.
The Army is also increasing their research and development [R&D] investment in their 2025 budget submission. That’s unusual for a major defense program like IBCS to be approved for production and then see R&D investment go up, and this is because of the additional systems and capabilities that the Army wants to integrate.
For example, over the last year or so we’ve been integrating the Army’s Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, known as LTAMDS. The Army also has plans to integrate the latest Sentinel A4 radar, and it announced plans to integrate THAAD [Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense]. There’s also a budget for deeper integration of the F-35 fighter as well as with passive sensors.
IBCS is a revolutionary command-and-control system that unifies current and future systems regardless of source, service, or domain. Through its network-enabled, modular, open and scalable architecture, IBCS gives warfighters capabilities they never had before by fusing sensor data for a single actionable picture of the full battlespace. This ready-now capability gives warfighters more time to make decisions on how best to defeat threats and is a foundational element for enabling joint and coalition, multi-domain operations.
Contact the author: jamie.hunter@teamrecurrent.io