Army Awards Contract for Indo-Pacific Air and Missile Defense Battle Manager Prototype

Anduril announced that the Army has awarded the company a contract to develop a Battle Manager prototype, an integrated command-and-control platform aimed at defending against various air and missile threats across the Indo-Pacific theater. The system will use Anduril’s Lattice software.

That software would allow the Army to collect and combine information from separate, existing missile defense systems and transform that data into a comprehensive operating picture.

Commanders often have to collect information from different systems when creating a comprehensive threat picture. The Army has stated that collecting information from different systems wastes precious time when trying to make quick decisions during a conflict. "As warfare becomes increasingly data-driven and multi-domain, the number of systems our armed forces rely on will grow exponentially.

This is an especially important dynamic in the defense of the Western Pacific — its extant missile defense systems are composed of a layered mix of systems from across multiple services and domains," Anduril’s press release stated. The Lattice software assigns sensors on various weapons systems a specific observation of data-collection tasks.

It enables human operators to know when, where, and how to engage systems against inbound missile threats.

The software also provides modeling and simulation tech that creates mission-realistic models. These help commanders to test, validate, and optimize the system in a high-fidelity environment. The Army did not respond to a request for comment on whether other vendors were awarded the Battle Management prototype.

Breaking Defense reported that the lack of response left unclear if the contract was awarded solely to Anduril. Anduril’s announcement comes after the Army revealed a program last week dubbed Right to Integrate (R2I). Nine defense contractors, one being Anduril, will participate in the Right to Integrate (R2I) program.

The R2I program will launch a sequence of hackathons in which the companies will integrate their own data into a common operating picture. Breaking Defense reported the initiative seeks to address the very data-silo problems the Battle Manager prototype is designed to solve.

A Soldier with Task Force Talon, 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, observes as a missile pallet is lowered during a practice missile reload and unload drill of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, on Feb.

6, 2019. The image, released by the Army, illustrates the layered missile defense assets already operating in the Indo-Pacific that the new Battle Manager aims to unify.