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.
Three of four congressional committees with influence over defense policy have voted to change the official name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War—but final approval of the Pentagon rebrand is months away and not yet assured.