Northrop Grumman announced that it has won the contract to modernize the Air Force’s air and space operations centers, the command and control hubs from which airmen execute air campaigns and coordinate cyber and space activities. The initial contract is worth $120 million, and if the Air Force exercises all contract options over eight years, that value would rise to $504 million, according to the company. Northrop Grumman’s industry team is tasked with fielding and sustaining improvements at eight AOC sites that will enable greater battle space awareness and more effective, dynamic planning, and execution, said the company. “Northrop Grumman is committed to delivering an evolvable, net-centric system that is affordable over the lifecycle,” said Linda Mills, Northrop Grumman Information Systems president. Patty Welsh, spokeswoman for the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB, Mass., told the Daily Report that Northrop Grumman’s activities will build upon Lockheed Martin’s five years of work as the AOC weapons systems integrator that concluded last September. Lockheed Martin’s work included defining the requirements baseline for the modernization of the AOC weapon system to the 10.2 configuration. Northrop Grumman will upgrade the AOCs to the 10.2 standard.
No matter what happens with the Nunn-McCurdy review of the Sentinel ICBM program, the nation must have a land-based element of its nuclear triad, Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.