Saab stakes claim for Land 75/125

Now that RFTs for Land 125 (Soldier Combat System) and Land 75 (Battle Management Systems for Army’s armoured vehicle fleet) have been rolled into one under the Defence Capability Plan, Adelaide-based Saab Systems, is staking a claim for the joint RFT.

Saab is confident that experience gained from working with Army on the evolutionary development and introduction into service of the Battlefield Combat Support System (BCSS) and its partnerships with leading army systems providers will give it the upper hand.

Saab Systems leads Australia in the design, systems integration, delivery and support of defence command and control systems with highly successful projects in battlefield-based and ship-based systems.

Saab has been the prime contractor for BCSS since 1998. Since then BCSS has been used by infantry battalions on active service during all rotations to East Timor and on current operations including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last month (Sept 06), Saab successfully completed system acceptance testing on the next generation of BCSS (Release 8).  System advances include a significantly improved battle map which allows greater situational awareness of own and enemy forces along with reduced time to capture and disseminate information. 

To make BCSS work over the narrow bandwidth of the Australian Army’s Combat Net Radio, Saab needed to develop some valuable indigenous techniques. Innovative technical solutions have been developed which optimise the performance of BCSS based on Saab’s intimate knowledge of the Australian Army’s operational needs and the characteristics of in-service communications systems.  Saab is confident that this proven experience will provide an essential foundation for Land 75/125.

According to Merv Davis, Saab Systems Managing Director, Saab’s experience with BCSS means it is ideally suited to continue the evolution of battlefield management systems in Australia but to strengthen this claim Saab has established a relationship with arguably the world’s most influential Army systems provider – Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. 

“Northrop Grumman is working directly with the US Army and US Marine Corps - this gives the Australia army tactical and operational interoperability with the most important allies,” said Davis.

The Northrop Grumman products include Force 21 Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2); Command and Control Personal Computer, (C2PC) and Command and Control Compact Edition (C2CE). These are the command and combat vehicle and soldier hand held Battlespace Management Systems for the US Army and the US Marine Corps.  US Forces are using these systems extensively on combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition Saab has assembled the strongest possible Australian team, with ADI and Tenix Land Systems, who bring highly valuable systems engineering, software engineering, communications and vehicle integration expertise.

The Saab led team claims to have the expertise and capacity in Australia to deliver a real system of systems solution to the ADF.  They also posses a VMF interoperable system that includes NSA accredited communications equipment.

The teaming partners bring with them in-country engineering resources with reach-back to additional engineering resources and expertise through parent companies across the globe.

Key to the Saab team’s offering is the ability to meet ADF battle management system needs by providing the war-fighter with low-risk, tailored COTS and MOTS products backed by in-service support that can be provided locally or to forces deployed anywhere around the world.

Leading Saab’s bid from Canberra is Jim Bancroft, Saab’s Land Systems Business Development Manager. One of many ex-ADF staff now at Saab, Bancroft is a retired Army Colonel who led UN peacekeeping troops in East Timor.  He believes his Army experience shapes his day-to-day work at Saab.

“Saab’s staff composition includes a good balance of people with operational experience and those with the necessary technical and engineering expertise to convert war-fighter requirements into reality,“ says Bancroft.

 “Those of us who have an ADF background have a personal passion for assisting the soldier in the field, especially our Servicemen and women on active service”, says Bancroft.

Bancroft says it is important to him and everyone in the Saab team, that they offer “affordable and proven capability to the ADF,”

Pointing to the interoperability demonstration of Saab’s BCSS teamed with a suite of Northrop Grumman products at the Land Warfare Conference on the Gold Coast last year, Bancroft says it showed that the technology code is being cracked.

“Using an operational scenario, this demonstration illustrated transparent connectivity from the Fire Team Leader to the Operational Headquarters using the same family of software”, says Bancroft.

In the first ever demonstration of variable message format (VMF) interoperability between Australian and US operational systems, Saab Systems and Northrop Grumman showed how the two countries’ forces could exchange vital operational information in a coalition environment.

Merv Davis said that through good teamwork the partners managed to integrate capability into the Australian Army’s BCSS so that users could send and receive VMF and Message Text Format (MTF) messages using US and Australian standards. 

“The system interaction enabled the exchange of critical situational awareness such as unit locations and target positions, and also allowed orders to be sent from headquarters and for individual units to pass reports back up the line.”

 “Australian BCSS users were able to interact with US counter parts using the existing BCSS system with its familiar interfaces,” Davis said. 

 “As well as demonstrating a synchronised operating picture, Saab and NG were able to demonstrate the ability for a tank patrol to call in fire from an ANZAC frigate.”

 “The demonstrations were the culmination of several months of hard work in planning, implementing and testing—both in Australia and the US,” Davis said.

“The ADF will be tactically interoperable with US ground forces and ready to operate in the digital battlefield of the 21st century due to the operational experience and deep engineering capability developed within Saab Systems and Northrop Grumman. Together with ADI and Tenix Land Systems this team will constitute a formidable combination to achieve the challenge of networking the hardened Army”.

8 September 2006