Lockheed Martin officials say the company has successfully tested a means to deliver time-sensitive intelligence data to combat commanders in minutes instead of hours. The company used non-traditional intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance data picked up from loitering missiles—or one en route to a target—and relaying it via the Global Information Grid directly to an operational commander on the ground. Lockheed says Experiment Alpha paves the way for future work at its new Center for Innovation. Discovering what’s on the GIG “is a tough challenge,” says Tom Haser, Lockheed’s director of net-centric integration. But, he asserts, it should be “as simple as finding a plumber or electrician in the Yellow Pages. The technology is not quite there, but we’re making progress.”
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.