Speed and agility are the key to successful innovation

Lockheed Martin Australia, closely partnered with Defence’s AIR­6500 Project Team, plans to deliver to the ADF the first elements of the $500m Joint Air Battle Management System, or JABMS.

Lockheed Martin personnel in the company's Endeavour Centre in Canberra.

Terms like “speed to capability” and “minimum viable capability” have become the common language of defence innovation in Australia. Both Defence and Lockheed Martin Australia have adopted the mentality behind these terms – and in just nine months from the award of its first contract in March, the company, closely partnered with Defence’s AIR­6500 Project Team, plans to deliver to the ADF the first elements of the $500m Joint Air Battle Management System, or JABMS.

The JABMS, acquired under Project AIR6500, will be the “brain” of the ADF’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) system. When its full capability is realised, JABMS will scan air, sea, land and space for targets ranging from enemy ships to hypersonic ballistic missiles. It will use Tactical Data Links to transmit separate sensor feeds into a single air operating picture of an area of operations and then help issue fire orders to the most appropriate “effectors”.

“This is probably the first (system) of its type anywhere in the world,” says Robert Milligan, the company’s program director for AIR6500. JABMS could be linked with fighters or early warning aircraft, data could be beamed down from a satellite, a special forces operator might pass back target track information or it could take a feed from an Aegis-equipped destroyer or from the JORN radar.

“That’s the beauty of it,” says Milligan. “You are bringing together all of the ADF’s sensors into a unified, tactical picture – and that’s quite powerful.”

The company is contracted to deliver only Phase 2a of Project AIR6500.

The first capability delivery in December this year will be an embryonic, alpha version of JABMS to enable Defence to test it, become familiar with it and provide feedback – which will be used to improve future capability releases as part of an agile capability delivery methodology.

By July 2026, just 18 months after that first delivery and under Phase 2a of Project AIR6500, the company plans to deliver a Joint Tactical Operations Centre (Light) – a vehicle-portable, mobile command and control centre that the ADF can use on live operations.

This will be part of a JABMS Minimum Viable Capability (MVC) comprising up to four CEA Technologies CEAFAR phased array radars acquired separately by Defence and up to five Silentium Defence passive radars acquired by Lockheed Martin Australia.

At its heart will be the command, control and communications system developed by Lockheed Martin Australia, mostly at its  systems integration laboratory in Adelaide.

Using an agile design and manufacturing methodology, the company is working on a rapid nine-month cycle, which enables extraordinary speed to capability, explains Milligan.

“The architecture for our JABMS isn’t dissimilar to that of an iPhone,” he says. “You’ve got an iOS – which for us is called Omni – and then the iOS runs a series of apps via the app store: we’ve got an app for the CEA radar, we’ve got an app for Silentium. It doesn’t matter what it is, essentially we can develop (an app for it).”

The RAAF selected Lockheed Martin Australia last year as its JABMS strategic partner.

“We absolutely live by that creed of being a strategic partner, and what is best for Defence,” says Milligan.

“We are executing AIR6500 by making judgments – in consultation with Defence – to deliver the very best capability we can, in the shortest possible time.

“We are acting as a true partner would act – by thinking proactively, closely collaborating with Defence on decisions, and acting in our joint interests.”

The company now employs nearly 250 staff directly on JABMS and more than 300 indirectly through its Australian supply chain. It has contracts with 10 Australian companies, ranging from giants such as Boeing Defence Australia, Raytheon Australia and Leidos Australia, to local SMEs such as Silentium Defence, C4i, Shoal Group and Lucid Consulting, and it has validated more than 130 others as possible suppliers.

Globally, Lockheed Martin Australia has also identified a ­possible $83bn worth of export ­opportunities for a JABMS-based technology.

“Our strong focus on Australian industry capability and integrating sovereign technologies into AIR6500 creates a viable pipeline into the global IAMD market,” Milligan says, noting that Australia’s own capability and sovereignty need to be safeguarded in the first instance, although every country would expect that it requires a customised command and control system.

“Australia is uniquely positioned because we are a small country and our defence force is small enough to be integrated ­effectively and efficiently,” Milligan says.

“What we do is being watched by a number of other countries.

“In Australia we don’t have any choice but to be small and nimble.”