MELBOURNE, March 2 (UPI) -- U.S. company Lockheed Martin has integrated C4ISR products by Rockwell Collins and DRS Defense Solutions into its Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory.
The AML is an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance test bed developed to help customers experiment with, and validate, how intelligence sensors and systems interact and how to best apply them in military and non-military markets.
"The AML has an architecture that allows us to easily integrate new capabilities," said Jim Quinn, vice president with Lockheed Martin's Information Systems & Global Solutions-Defense. "This gives us the flexibility to exploit multiple intelligence sensor combinations to address the needs of many different customers. One day we can test radar for a military customer; then reconfigure the platform to fly a pipeline survey experiment."
Lockheed, in a news release from the Avalon 2011 Aerospace and Defense Exposition in Australia, said a modified Gulfstream III business jet -- the AML's open, "plug-and-play" architecture -- allows various sensors and systems to be rapidly integrated into the aircraft with minimal development time.
The AML has grown in functionality over the past year with new capabilities being integrated from a variety of companies, including new Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance sensors provided by DRS Defense Solutions and advanced Rockwell Collins avionics integrated into the AML's mission system.
Other companies providing equipment to the AML include FLIR Systems, which provides High-Definition Electro-Optical/Infrared sensors, and L-3 Communications Systems-West, which provides wideband data links.
