09 Sep 03. Following on from our story yesterday that Lockheed Martin had chosen Supacat to provide the vehicles for the Soothsayer requirement, Ron Abbott, V.P. tactical Missiles, told BATTLESPACE that the company had made significant progress in the development of the Supacat 6×6 vehicle to provide a 120mm mortar platform for the U.S. Marine Corps. The vehicle will be on display at the Quantico exhibition next week. “We surprised everyone, including ourselves, when we test fired the mortar from the Supacat vehicle. It proved a completely stable platform proving all our testing to date. Lockheed Martin Missiles is also using the vehicle for the Insys-led LIAWS requirement for the UK. The addition of the mortar application gives the company a complete range of heli-portable artillery systems for close support purposes. The vehicle has been lifted in a CH-53 helicopter and the V-22. BATTLESPACE will be covering developments in this system and the recent deployment of HIMARS during Operation Enduring Freedom in our February issue.

Lockheed Martin UK announced the award of a £10million contract to provide the requirement for the UK’s BC2T training system in a contract inked last week. The desk top trainer will support the UK’s Command And Staff Trainer (CAST), providing training in command procedures to the UK’s battlegroup commanders. The first four systems will be delivered to the UK’s Land Warfare Centre at Warminster. A further eight systems are to be delivered to each of the 4th and 12th Mechanised Brigades battlegroups to provide personnel with experience of CAST training and procedures to maximise training time rather than spending time gaining basic proficiency with the system. Options for the system could increase the contracts value to £20m. Other competitors for the contract included Raytheon, Thales, SAIC and SCS/EDS.

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, competing for the UK’s Ground Based Air Defence (GBAD) contract has recently completed work on a communications interface to integrate Egypt’s battlefield air defence network. Egypt fields both the Chapparal and the more recently acquired Avenger. Lockheed Martin supplied a communications interface and command and control capability within an open architecture in its Network Activated SHORAD System (NASRAD). This provided capabilities for the weapon systems including slew-to-cue. The C2 system uses a mobile containerised Unix based system over an Ethernet LAN.