The US Army has selected BAE Systems to provide technological solutions for the newest variant of the service’s Distributed Common Ground Sensor-Army (DCGS-A) battlefield management programme, company officials have announced.
The contract award is one of several army leaders plan to hand out as part of a USD823 million indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity (IDIQ) acquisition vehicle, designed to develop advanced technologies for DCGS-A Capability Drop 2 (CD-2). Industry competitors sent in proposals for DCGA-A CD-2 in August 2019 to the programme manager’s office under US Army’s Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors (IEW&S) directorate, headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland.
BAE Systems will offer its Intelligence Knowledge Environment (IKE) software framework as the keystone for the company’s proposed solution for DCGS-A CD-2. (Getty Images )
The initial delivery contract awarded to BAE Systems is one of two that service leaders plan to issue, as part of the IDIQ. Testing and evaluation for the CD-2 variant will likely consist of four preliminary assessment events followed by a full operational assessment, according to programme officials.
The early anticipated fielding date for DCGS-A CD-2 is slated for 2021. American software company Palantir beat Raytheon in March 2019 to win the development contract for DCGS-A CD-1.
Utilising a network of ruggedized laptops, capable of remote access in a network restricted or denied environment, the CD-1 version of the battlefield management system enables army intelligence analysts at the battalion level, programme officials at IEW&S said. CD-2, however, expands the system’s CD-1 battalion-level scope and focuses on the DCGS “fusion brains” or the fixed site, intelligence fusion centres that act as the backbone of the entire enterprise.
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