Airborne technology from Boeing Mission Systems received favorable reviews at Nellis Air Force Base, following a series of combat tests that provided enhanced real-time situational awareness in the cockpit of the B-1 bomber.

“This is a huge leap in combat capability. I flew with it and it was amazing,” said Air Force Maj. George A. Holland, who trains in the B-1 equipped with the Mission Systems Combat Track II, an airborne satellite communications system that provides secure messaging networks between multiple mobile platforms to increase aircrew survivability and airframe utilization. “The addition of Link 16 is an awesome capability and situational awareness tool that changes the tactics, techniques and procedures we use in combat,” Holland said in a recent e-mail to the Boeing Combat Track II program office.

Comments like this aren’t unusual for Boeing Mission Systems employees, an operating component of the Space and Intelligence Systems unit of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. Mission Systems employees provide a lot of the “gee whiz” expertise that puts geospatial situational awareness into the hands of warfighters in the air and on the ground. Those technologies enable platforms and people to operate in a network-centric environment.

“Building network system prototypes and integrating real-time information that provides actionable intelligence is at the heart of what we provide our customers,” said Brian Knutsen, general manager of Mission Systems. “The visualization, simulation and data management systems we develop directly impact the safety of military troops because they provide timely, secure and accurate intelligence information.”

Among Mission Systems success stories are the recent initial deliveries of detailed earth reference maps produced for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from Space Shuttle radar data, and its role as a prime contractor for the NGA’s Global Geospatial Initiative, a program that has provided detailed intelligence data for Department of Defense units operating in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mission Systems provides the Intelligence Community and their customers with solutions that support the need to acquire and manage intelligence from multiple sources and to visualize and share it across agencies and the military.

As a prime contractor for an NGA program that will produce a digital topographic reference model of the Earth from radar data collected by Space Shuttle Endeavour, Boeing is helping to produce detailed maps and charts with more information than resides in the Library of Congress by creating cells of radar data, one degree of latitude by one degree of longitude. Boeing produced more than 9,100 cells—about 66 percent of all the cells produced from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

Boeing is continuing to make enhancements to the elevation data by removing radar anomalies and filling the void areas with alternate data sources. Approximately 7,000 additional cells will have been enhanced by the end of 2005.

Other Boeing projects now under way for the NGA include Global Geospatial Initiative Stereo Airfield Collection and Country Collection, both of which produce highly intricate, complex geographic data. One customer described the task as “one of the most difficult ever contracted out.” He went on to praise Boeing’s leadership, which “made this project successful and one that could be used as an example of how to manage successful government contracts.”

Boeing Mission Systems also developed and deployed a large scale, spatially indexed product library for a key Intelligence Community customer using all commercial-off-the-shelf software and standards-based components.

Boeing’s work on projects such as these led NGA Director and retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. to call the company “a valued and trusted partner.”