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.
Anduril and General Atomics will develop their Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force, beating out Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the service announced on April 24. But any of the non-selected companies can compete to actually manufacture the eventual design, the Air Force said.