Joint Warfare Breakthrough: Army Battle Command Sends Target Info to Navy System

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

(Washington, D.C.) If a long-range ballistic missile or descending ICBM traverses over the ocean en route to a sensitive land target, certainly ground commanders might wish to find and see the threat as quickly and as early as possible to enact the proper defensive countermeasure.

Perhaps the missile can be jammed by a Navy ship, detected or even shot down by an SM-3 or SM-6 interceptor before it reaches land? 

Perhaps ground commanders can receive a beyond-the-horizon early warning of the approaching threat as it closes in on high value coastal land areas in need of being defended?

Daryl Youngman, Deputy Director of Army Futures Command Air and Missile Defense Cross Functional Team, says the Army is indeed pursuing ways how its Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) of integrated “nodes” across an interconnected network can connect land-based threat sensors with Navy ships.

“We have several exploratory efforts,” Youngman told Warrior in an interview.

Integrated Battle Command System

During a recent test of the fast-progressing Army Integrated Battle Command System, a networked “meshed” series of ground nodes integrated to share air and missile defense target track data between otherwise disaggregated defensive nodes and command and control systems.

While taking place on land, the test showed the emerging prospect of bringing IBCS fully into a joint, multi-domain warfare environment to include maritime platforms.