Airborne C4ISR Laboratory for Electronic Sensors Unveiled

Engineers at Lockheed Martin Corp. in Denver have unveiled and certified the Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory (AML) to tailor advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensor combinations to resolve specific military, strategic intelligence and homeland security mission needs.

Company officials say the airborne command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) airborne sensor suite will help war fighters receive critical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities sooner.

The airborne sensors test bed has received its Experimental Airworthiness Certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in Washington. The airborne electronic sensors laboratory for airborne intelligence is a reconfigured Gulfstream III business jet for the development of new sensors and processing capabilities.

"We've designed the AML so that we can easily test a myriad of sensors to advance the science and art of correlating diverse types of intelligence – with the goal of rapidly providing high-quality data," says Jim Quinn, Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services-Defense's vice president of C4ISR Systems.

The aircraft will facilitate this experimentation, including a computing capability that supports most commercial operating systems, a radome on the belly of the aircraft with ample volume for a range of sensors, and four workstations.

In addition, the AML can process data both onboard and on the ground to accommodate a variety of experiments. While the AML is equipped with a robust suite of sensors as well as wideband and narrowband data links, the intent is to rotate sensors as necessary to answer specific requirements. To achieve that goal, the AML incorporates an easily reconfigurable architecture designed to allow different sensors and equipment to be rapidly integrated into the aircraft's mission systems.

This architecture also allows for future testing of innovative techniques for multi-INT mission planning, intelligence gathering, processing, exploitation and dissemination for a wide variety of missions across the spectrum of operations. Near-term experimentation includes participation in the U.S. Army's upcoming C4ISR On-the-Move exercise at Fort Dix, N.J.

Source:  Military & Aerospace Electronics