Page 130 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2021

130 AIRPOWER
NOVEMBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
THE SKY-HIGH AMBITIONS OF AIR 6500
EWEN LEVICK | MELBOURNE
Of all the big projects in Defence, there are only a few that tend to make it into wider public discussion. These are invariably the projects people can ‘see’ – submarines, combat reconnaissance vehicles, F-35s, infantry fi hting vehicles. These projects are all important in their own right. But one of the largest and most ambitious projects in Defence is often overlooked: Air 6500, the Joint Air Battle Management System for the ADF and what Defence calls the ‘core’ of the future Integrated Air and Missile Defence capability.
AIR 6500 is the keystone in the RAAF’s fifth-generation arch- way. Its purpose is to connect all platforms and sensors across all warfighting domains into a single interface that can track threats, coordinate a joint response, and direct that response onto the target. It is ‘all sensor, best shooter’ writ large.
Initially four companies were bidding for the program – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing – on the understanding that the successful bidder would be required to work with the other three to provide best-of-breed solutions to the ADF. This understanding was laid down on the basis that no single company is ca- pable of meeting the ambition of Air 6500 alone.
In early August, Defence down-selected Lockheed Martin Australia (LMA) and Northrop Grumman Australia (NGA) to continue to the final stage of the competitive evaluation process (known as CEP Stage 2, which is a risk reduction activity). Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price said those two companies had ‘demonstrated the best under- standing of [Defence’s] capability requirements’ and ‘a strong
DEFENCE