Coronavirus pandemic (temporarily) derails the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System program
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force has postponed the second round of tests for its next-generation battle management system due to the new coronavirus, known as COVID-19, moving the exercise from April to June. C4ISRnet reports. Continue reading original article
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
25 March 2020 -- The Air Force conducted the first demonstration of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) in December, using operational platforms like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, F-22 jets, and the Navy destroyer Thomas Hudner — to test experimental technologies meant to allow the services to connect and share data more seamlessly.
During a news conference on the Air Force’s response to COVID-19, its chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, stressed that the service will pick up the test effort again as soon as the pandemic subsides.
Although the service codified an overall architecture for the system, which will require a more modern IT backbone and moving data to the cloud, the Air Force has not identified specific systems or contractors that will build or integrate the system, instead choosing to conduct multiple experiments to shake out what technologies work and which can be pulled into the whole of ABMS.
John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics
