Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have reached an out-of-court settlement over the two contractors’ pursuit of a critical Air Force program—the Distributed Common Ground System. The DCGS is designed to enable direct data transfer from intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance aircraft to warfighters on the ground. According to Raytheon, agreement details are confidential. However, officials said that both companies would be able “to pursue future DCGS efforts together or with other industry partners and respect the proprietary information agreements between the two companies.” Lockheed Martin recently fielded an interim common imagery element for the two existing DCGS stations. (DR, 10/05/05) The Air Force expects to begin development efforts—probably a new competition—for the next version of DCGS in 2007.
A new Air Force organization is searching for counter-drone firms to participate in a dozen or more exercises to help create operating plans by the end of this year for defending the service’s U.S.-based installations from drone attacks.