U.S. Army Awards Northrop $1.4B for Integrated Battle Command System

The U.S. Army awarded Northrop Grumman a contract worth nearly $1.4 billion for both low-rate initial production and full-rate production of its Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS).

This award represents the first significant competition for this major defense acquisition program since the 2009 award of the engineering and manufacturing development contract, the Army said in a release.

IBCS is a keystone Army Futures Command program that will provide a decisive battlefield advantage through weapon and sensor integration and a common mission-command system across all domains, delivering an integrated fires capability to the warfighter while improving battle space awareness, decision timing and protection against threats in complex integrated attack scenarios. The system links disparate missile defense assets to bolster command and control, and ultimately plugs into the joint force’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort.

The program has cost the service nearly $3 billion to develop to date. It was originally meant to serve only as the command-and-control system for the Army’s future Integrated Air-and-Missile Defense System (IAMD) against regional ballistic missile threats. But the service has since expanded its role to tie together a broad array of sensors and shooters with the ability of defeating other complex threats, such as cruise missiles and unmanned aircraft.

Under the terms of this contract, Northrop Grumman will deliver up to 160 systems to support the modernization of air and missile defense for the U.S. Army and foreign partners. Following an FRP decision in fiscal year 2023, the contract will enable the program to seamlessly ramp up production to meet Army fielding priorities.

The service received two bids. Work is expected to be completed by Dec. 22, 2026.

IBCS destroyed a cruise missile in a test conducted over the summer that included electronic warfare (EW) attacks on radars and tied together data from multiple different platforms from other services, included the F-35 and PAC-3 anti-missile battery.