Northrop Grumman has successfully completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for the U.S. Army's Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Battle Command System (IBCS).

The CDR provided an in-depth assessment, by a government team of experts and managers, that the IBCS design is programmatically and technically realistic and attainable. The successful review determined the IBCS detailed design satisfies cost, schedule and performance requirements and demonstrates the maturity for proceeding with full-scale fabrication, assembly, integration and test.

In addition to the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Project Office, the IAMD community of interest organizations participating in the CDR included: Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Army Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, Army Fires Center of Excellence, Training and Doctrine Command Capability Manager for Army Air and Missile Defense, Army Lower Tier Project Office, Army Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar Project Office, and Army Cruise Missile Defense System Project Office.

"The Army and Northrop Grumman IBCS team has made substantial progress on this important program that will bring innovative, affordable and life-saving capabilities to the warfighter," said Kelley Zelickson, vice president of air and missile defense systems for Northrop Grumman Information Systems.

"With this significant milestone achieved, we look forward to an early demonstration of IBCS combat capability during the IAMD exercise planned for 2013."

The IBCS program resulted from analysis of Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom operations to improve mission command as a top priority for reducing fratricide incidents and implementing an enterprise approach to command and control.

IBCS will establish an open systems, network-centric system-of-systems solution for integrating sensors, weapons, and battle management command, control, communications and intelligence systems.

IBCS uses a plug-and-fight approach to ensure current and future systems can be easily incorporated, allowing warfighters to take advantage of integrated Army and joint sensors and weapons. The IBCS enterprise environment focuses on warfighter decision processes and tools to optimize time-critical engagements.

Northrop Grumman's IBCS industry team includes The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Harris Corporation, Schafer Corporation, nLogic Inc., Numerica Corporation, Colsa Corporation, EpiQ Inc., Space and Mission Defense Technologies, CohesionForce Inc., Millennium Engineering and Integration Company, RhinoCorps and Tobyhanna Army Depot.