Northrop Grumman Wins $120 Million Contract for U.S. Air Force Command and Control Modernization Program

Pro­gram Will Cre­ate a Secure, Stream­lined Com­put­ing Envi­ron­ment to Increase Oper­a­tional Effec­tive­ness and Reduce Costs
MCLEAN, Va. — The U.S. Air Force has select­ed Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion (NYSE:NOC) for the Air and Space Oper­a­tions Cen­ter (AOC) Weapon Sys­tem (WS) mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram with an ini­tial award of $120 mil­lion. The con­tract has a poten­tial val­ue of $504 mil­lion over eight years, if all options are exer­cised.

AOC WS is the com­mand and con­trol cen­ter for plan­ning, exe­cut­ing and assess­ing joint air oper­a­tions dur­ing a con­tin­gency or con­flict. Under the con­tract from the Elec­tron­ic Sys­tems Cen­ter, Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., the team led by Northrop Grum­man will mod­ern­ize the AOC to enable greater bat­tle space aware­ness and more effec­tive, dynam­ic plan­ning and execution. 

“Northrop Grum­man is com­mit­ted to deliv­er­ing an evolv­able, net-cen­tric sys­tem that is afford­able over the life­cy­cle,” said Lin­da Mills, cor­po­rate vice pres­i­dent and pres­i­dent of Northrop Grum­man Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. “In addi­tion, we will use our cyber­se­cu­ri­ty exper­tise to ensure secure oper­a­tions across the full range of missions.” 

AOC WS pro­gram objec­tives include improv­ing the speed of com­mand by automat­ing infor­ma­tion exchange, accel­er­at­ing the inte­gra­tion of warfight­er capa­bil­i­ties and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing life­cy­cle costs. Task­ing under the entire con­tract includes design, inte­gra­tion, test and deliv­ery of a net­work-cen­tric infra­struc­ture and mis­sion appli­ca­tions with field­ing and sus­tain­ment at eight AOC sites. 

“We’re focused on rapid­ly bring­ing nec­es­sary capa­bil­i­ties to the warfight­er,” said Mike Twyman, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Defense Sys­tems Divi­sion, Northrop Grum­man Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. “We plan an iter­a­tive process of ear­ly, fre­quent pro­to­typ­ing, incor­po­rat­ing feed­back and matur­ing incre­men­tal improvements. 

“Our team will devel­op a com­pos­able solu­tion built upon our Mod­u­lar Open Sys­tems Approach-Com­pet­i­tiveTM mod­el to offer mis­sion-tai­lorable capa­bil­i­ties and allow con­tin­u­ous life­cy­cle refresh and com­pe­ti­tion,” he said. 

Northrop Grumman’s Mod­u­lar Open Sys­tems Approach-Com­pet­i­tiveTM (MOSA-CTM) is a strate­gic busi­ness and engi­neer­ing process that achieves the life­cy­cle ben­e­fits of open-sys­tems archi­tec­ture and com­mer­cial off-the-shelf com­po­nents and soft­ware. The MOSA-CTM process ensures ven­dor-neu­tral, endur­ing solu­tions that improve inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and low­er the total cost of ownership. 

The Northrop Grum­man-led team includes AgilePath Cor­po­ra­tion, New­bury­port, Mass.; Capgem­i­ni Gov­ern­ment Solu­tions, Hern­don, Va.; Zel­Tech Tech­nolo­gies, Hamp­ton, Va.; Lay­er 7 Tech­nolo­gies, Wash­ing­ton, D.C.; Bosh Glob­al Ser­vices, New­port News, Va.; Applied Minds, Glen­dale, Calif.; and DMM Ven­tures, York­town, Va. 

Northrop Grumman’s AOC WS warfight­er Inte­gra­tion and Test Lab­o­ra­to­ry (ITL) is locat­ed in New­port News, Va. The com­pa­ny will use the facil­i­ty for close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Air Force per­son­nel to improve user expe­ri­ence, and deliv­er a ful­ly inte­grat­ed and secure solution. 

Northrop Grum­man is a lead­ing glob­al secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing inno­v­a­tive sys­tems, prod­ucts and solu­tions in aero­space, elec­tron­ics, infor­ma­tion sys­tems and tech­ni­cal ser­vices to gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial cus­tomers world­wide. Please vis­it www.northropgrumman.com for more information.