Poland purchases an integrated military command system for the tidy sum of 2.5 billion dollars
Poland has signed an agreement with the United States for the purchase of a $2.5 billion integrated battle command system (IBCS), the Defense Minister said on Thursday. An important purchase both economically and operationally.
In recent years, the country, a member of NATO and the EU, has made major military purchases – mostly from the United States and South Korea – due to security concerns related to the war in neighboring Ukraine.
Warsaw currently spends more than 4% of GDP on defense, the highest rate among NATO members.
“The Polish army is acquiring an operational brain for air and missile defense systems,” Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said together with the US ambassador in Warsaw.
“Poland will be the second country, after the United States, to have the most modern integrated command system in the world,” he added.
Mark Brzezinski, the US ambassador, highlighted the importance of the agreement on X, formerly Twitter.
“We have seen with our own eyes in Ukraine how crucial air and missile defense is and this order will provide Poland with the best, most modern and effective tools to defend NATO territory,” he wrote in Polish.
According to the agreement, Poland will receive the battle command system by 2031.
What is an IBCS
The Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) is an integrated air and missile defense command system developed by Northrop Grumman, a US-based aerospace and defense technology company.
The system is intended to be deployed with US Army units for frontline combat, and the US Department of Defense (DoD) approved it for full-rate production in April 2023.
IBCS integrates multiple sensors and weapons systems into a single network, enabling faster decision-making and more efficient engagement of targets in multi-domain battle operations. It can provide warfighters with greater situational awareness, improved operational efficiency and increased lethality, while enabling high-level interoperability and integration among coalition partners.
The system is being adopted as part of the U.S. Army's broader modernization efforts to keep pace with emerging threats and maintain its technological edge over adversaries.
The U.S. Army awarded Northrop Grumman a five-year contract worth more than $1 billion for initial low-rate production and full-rate production of the IBCS in December 2021.
The IBCS is a state-of-the-art, software-defined, network-enabled air and missile defense command and control system. It is designed with a modular, open and scalable architecture to create a unified and seamless network with multiple sensors and weapons systems.
The system enables integration with existing and future sensors and weapons systems in the battlespace, regardless of source, service or domain. It is capable of connecting and merging multi-service sensor data with multi-service weapons of existing and future systems, including assets deployed on IP-enabled networks, counter-UAS systems, fourth and fifth generation aircraft, space sensors and more.
The main components of the IBCS include Integrated Fire Control Network (IFCN) relays, an Engagement Operations Center (EOS) that provides an interactive collaborative environment, and common software, which merges sensor data and creates a single integrated aerial imagery that allows warfighters to choose the most appropriate weapon to defeat air and missile defense (AMD) threats effectively and efficiently.
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The article Poland buys an integrated military command system for the tidy sum of 2.5 billion dollars comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-polonia-acquista-un-sistema-di-comando-militarre-integrato-per-la-bella-cifra-di-25-miliardi-di-dollari/ on Fri, 01 Mar 2024 09:00:43 +0000.