IBCS set for full rate production, Polish milestone, Northrop says
BERLIN — Northrop Grumman will begin a transition this month to full rate production of its Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), ahead of Poland reaching a full operational capability milestone before the end of the year, top company executives told Breaking Defense.
“We are, this month, pushing the throttles up, so to speak, on full rate production at our Huntsville facility, which is called EPIC [short for] Enhanced Production Integration Center,” said Kenn Todorov, vice president and general manager of C2 and weapons integration at Northrop Grumman, on the sidelines of the Berlin Security Conference last week.
IBCS connects radars and effectors not designed to work with one another, under a single command and control system that enables integration of the otherwise disparate systems. The system is the backbone of Northrop’s C2 push in recent years.
“We have the capacity to….increase our production by two, three or even four times what we do today, and we’re thinking ahead of that demand signal that we’re anticipating and interest from” potential export customers, Todorov said of the move to full rate production.
International launch customer Poland selected IBCS for the WISŁA medium range air defense program in 2018, leading to the signing of a $2.5 billion deal with the US government last year.
Todorov said he believes Poland is on the path to reach full operational capability “by the end of the year.”
Warsaw’s expected milestone comes after it recently carried out a local live-fire demonstration where IBCS “engaged and intercepted surrogate air-breathing targets,” according to a Northrop Grumman statement.
The exercise took place “on the shores of the Baltic Sea [and] probably [stands as] the most stressing live fire flight test that the system has undergone” to date, said Todorov. “It went extremely well,” he noted.
In 2024, Northrop Grumman CEO Chief Executive Officer Kathy Warden forecast an IBCS “pipeline” worth in the region of $10 billion, based on global demand.
Despite additional orders from new customers not arriving since then, the number of countries expressing an interest in IBCS has “grown” beyond a prior company projection of 12, said Steve O’Bryan, president Northrop Grumman International. These are “requests in writing from different governments, he added. “We’ll just keep it [confined to]…information related to the pricing, availability” of IBCS, as opposed to sharing additional details.
Stephanie Willmann, country executive for Germany at Northrop Grumman, said that there is a “very vivid interest” from Berlin in acquiring IBCS.
“There’s tremendous interest from our German customer in local industrial content, and [we are] very interested in the details of how German industry can benefit from an IBCS [potential order] as well,” added Todorov.
As previously reported by Breaking Defense, Northrop has also pitched IBCS for the multinational European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), as well as to NATO for the alliance’s Air Command and Control System (ACCS) replacement effort.
So it’s notable that during the Berlin Security Conference, the US firm and European weapons house MBDA inked a Memorandum of Understanding centered on bolstering German air and missile defense capabilities.
The latest pact is in addition to a separate agreement between Northrop and German weapons producer Diehl Defence, from 2024, to jointly “support innovative layered air and missile defense capabilities for Germany.”
