Page 135 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2021

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AIRPOWER 135
the solution. We’ve brought in more and more thinking. We’ve looked at various architectures, we’ve built a number of models. The core engineering team is primarily in Adelaide but it is also distrib- uted in the US.”
LMA held a roadshow around Australia and virtual session with New Zealand’s defence industry, from which it identified 130 SMEs that could eventually contrib- ute to the Air 6500 solution.
Since the roadshow LMA has formally partnered with five Australian SMEs for Air 6500: Consilium Technology, Con- sunet, Shoal, Silentium Defence and Ultra. These companies will focus their efforts on electronic warfare battle man- agement, contested communications, cyber protection, advanced systems engi- neering and passive sensing.
“We’ve been able to integrate with their capability and then demonstrate that in- tegrated capability in real time,” Froelich said. “We stimulate the input and get live reactions out of these systems, even though they weren’t designed to work together.”
Like NGA, Lockheed is transferring technology and drawing on experience from teams based in the US to build the Australian capability. So far the company has had ‘well over a dozen’ Technical As- sistance Agreements approved to allow the transfer of US technology over to Australia for co-development.
“There’s a large number of people who are actively working on Air 6500 today and the majority of them are in Austra- lia,” Froelich said. “The US and Austra- lian teams share information every day, but all of the work today that we’re under contract for is primarily being done in Australia. We have seven risk reduction areas that we’re going through – which is just a maturation of the program.”
LMA is considering a wide array of technologies from across industry for its Air 6500 test system. One of the candi- dates is a ‘Virtualised Aegis Weapons System’, which uses a tactical cloud to – as Froelich describes – ‘package Aegis into a virtual, expeditionary form.’
Yet Froelich also emphasises the cen- trality of open systems thinking to LMA’s bid for Air 6500, confirming that the company is in conversations with Ray- theon, Boeing and others to look for best- of-breed solutions.
“We looked at other US based systems, we have looked at various display systems