Joint Air Battle Management System for the ADF

One should think before acting: that’s a fundamental rule in life. The Australian Department of Defence seems to be living this rule in saying it plans to concentrate its resources first on the ‘brains’ of its new Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) system.

It will now leave two important anti-air and -missile phases until a bit later, but aims to take delivery of the first tranche of IAMD capability before the end of this calendar year.

The ‘brains’ of the IAMD, to be acquired under Project AIR6500 Ph.1, is the Joint Air Battle Management System, or JABMS, for which Lockheed Martin Australia (LMA) was selected in August 2023.

The estimated $765 million (US$328 million) contract to establish an eight-year strategic partnership with the Department of Defence was awarded in April 2024. Project AIR6500 is expected eventually to be a multi-billion dollar, multi-phase project.

The two ‘pending’ contracts are AIR6502, the Medium range Ground-Based Air Defence System (M-GBADS), and AIR6503 which is intended to provide a defence against ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

Lockheed Martin Australia (LMA) will make its first delivery to the RAAF of JABMS capability before the end of this calendar year. That is a very rapid schedule, enabled by the company’s supply chain.

The JABMS is on a roughly nine-month cycle of capability refreshment, so by mid/late-2025 LMA aims to deliver its Air Battle Management Console and then in 2026 it will deliver what Defence terms the JABMS Minimum Viable Capability (MVC), consisting of passive and active radars and a command, control and communications (C3) system that can act as the heart of the IAMD.

In mid-July, just five months after winning a production contract from LMA, Adelaide-based company Silentium Defence delivered the first tranche of five MAVERICK Fortress-3D passive radars as part of the JABMS. The Silentium passive radars are actually part of Tranche 2a of JABMS; Tranche 1 is a fleet of four CEA phased array radars which will be delivered later this year – they are understood to be similar to those already ordered as part of NASAMS.

The Silentium passive radars are a big deal, not just for Silentium Defence but for the Australian Defence Force (ADF), and Silentium Defence is believed to be the only company in the world delivering passive radars for surveillance of sea, air, land and space.

Instead of having a dedicated transmitter, which can then be located and jammed or targeted for an anti-radar missile, the covert, frequency agile MAVERICK Fortress-3D passive radar picks up VHF and FM radio signals emitted mainly by broadcast TV and radio stations. These are reflected by radar targets and detected by Silentium’s radar receivers in the usual way.

The company’s passive radars are designed to provide a 3D surveillance capability enabling instantaneous, wide-field-of-view surveillance across all domains – surface, air, maritime and space – out to an altitude of about 1,500km.

Because passive radars do not have a transmitter, they have a low Size, Weight and Power (SWAP) footprint and a low heat signature. Silentium Defence’s radars are also highly accurate to enable cross-cueing of other sensors and effectors, according to both LMA and Defence sources.

The MAVERICK Fortress-3D radar has a ring array to determine the target’s bearing in azimuth and a vertical array which determines the target’s altitude and so provide the 3D capability. It is also container-mounted for mobility using a modified 10’ x 10’ ISO cargo container modified for LMA by Varley Defence, located near Sydney, and can be either a stand-alone sensor or part of a much more elaborate network.

Silentium Defence began life in 2017 as a two-man spin-off from the Defence Science and Technology Group in Edinburgh, South Australia. The majority of its funding has come from Defence research and production contracts from all three Australian armed services. It now employs some 60 staff.

Silentium secured its first U.S. contract, for which it hasn’t disclosed details, in October 2023 and in July this year one of its two co-founders, Simon Palumbo, moved to Washington DC to open the company’s U.S. office as Executive Vice President of Silentium Defense Corporation. Palumbo’s re-positioning to Washington DC is a direct response to the increased demand for its MAVERICK 3D passive radars across the US defence and government markets, says Silentium Defence.

What about the medium and long-range elements of IAMD?

Defense.info understands that AIR6502 will now be delivered eventually as a part of AIR6500.

Defence released an AIR6502 Request for Proposal (RFP) in September 2021, seeking capability solutions from across global industry. The RFP closed on 10 December 2021 and an evaluation of responses was conducted in the first quarter of 2022, though no solutions were selected.

The acquisition of new active missile defence systems will now be considered as technology matures, says Defence, including in the context of the 2026 National Defence Strategy, and taking into account developments in the technology used by the United States and other key partners. The same would seem to apply to Project AIR6503 which has gone very quiet.

Meanwhile, the Australian Department of Defence is pressing ahead with the acquisition of a new National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System, or NASAMS, under Project LAND19 Phase 7b.

This will provide the point defence portion of the IAMD and protect critical installations or infrastructure and was approved some time ago.

It will be similar to the upgraded NASAMS that Norway is fielding, except that it will be fitted with mobile variants of Australian firm CEA Technologies’ CEAFAR2 Active Scanning Electronic Array (AESA) radar, the lightweight CEATAC and heavier CEAOPS.

The system, to be primed by Raytheon with support from CEA Technologies and Norwegian firm Kongsberg, will use the Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM missile and ever-green AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, both air-to-air weapons but fired from a ground launcher.

Lockheed Martin Australia acknowledges the potential for allied customers to ask for some sort of JABMS-like system in the future but is concentrating on delivering to the ADF first and proving the system works satisfactorily before pursuing export opportunities.

It is also very aware of the ADF’s own need for secrecy in certain areas so there are things it will not be able to export. Once it is free to turn its attention to them, LMA believes it has identified some $83 billions-worth (US$55 billion) of opportunities.

The company’s Australian supply chain has several suppliers embedded already and LMA said in 2023 it had identified more than 130 other Australian firms as potential partners. It has also committed to spending $74 million developing Australia’s IAMD ecosystem in order to create an enduring capability at RAAF Base Williamtown’s Special Activation Precinct (SAP), north of Sydney.

There is a recognition by both LMA and Defence that the traditional Initial and Full Operational Capability (IOC and FOC) milestones used in defence acquisition are meaningless.

With a nine-month technology refresh cycle, at least initially, and a constantly evolving JABMS configuration, Defence’s emphasis on speed to capability, asymmetry and Minimum Viable Capabilities (MVC) means it will far outstrip traditional capability acquisition and delivery methods.

Featured Photo: AIR6500 Phase 1 will provide the ADF with a Joint Air Battle Management System (JABMS) which will form the architecture at the core of the ADF’s future Integrated Air and Missile Defence capability.

Credit: Australian Department of Defence