COMBATSS-21 for US Navy frigates

US Navy frigates will be equipped with Lockheed Martin’s Component-Based Total-Ship System—21st Century (COMBATSS-21) combat management system under a contract announced on 23 August. The five-year contract, worth up to $79.5 million, will run 2016-2021.

COMBATSS-21 is already in operation on the Freedom variant Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The open architecture system is built from the Aegis Common Source Library (CSL), and shares a pedigree with the Aegis Baseline 9 software developed for the Aegis cruiser and destroyer fleet, the Aegis Ashore system, LCS and the US Coast Guard National Security Cutters.   

The CSL allows surface combatants to rapidly and affordably integrate new capabilities across the fleet. This means that ships using a CSL-derived combat system can incorporate new sensors, weapons and capability upgrades to keep pace with evolving threats. The benefit of the surface combatant CSL is that these updates become available for rollout across other ship classes.

Rich Calabrese, director of mission systems at Lockheed Martin, said: ‘We look forward to providing this combat management system to the frigates and potentially other platforms across the US Navy, as it will bring commonality across the fleet of surface combatants and is a step toward realising the vision of distributed lethality.

‘Using the CSL enhances life-cycle affordability by reducing costs for integration, test and certification—and delivers an open combat system architecture in line with the navy’s objective architecture, driving affordability and increasing interoperability across the entire fleet.’