Ever increasing threats and the need to have constant situational awareness of one's surroundings prompted Lockheed Martin to add an integrated air and missile defense option to its Dragon series of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance configurations. Lockheed Martin's Dragon ISR configurations offer a unique approach for customers to tailor their mission requirements to meet their specific budget, sensor, communications and platform needs.

The most recent option, Dragon Dome, is an unprecedented capability that links ISR, air operations and missile defense systems at the battle management level, allowing users to work together in a shared environment to optimize defense operations.

"We recognize that there are increasingly complex multi-national requirements for integrated air and missile defense," said Jim Quinn, vice president of C4ISR Systems with Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions.

"Dragon Dome can dramatically improve the ability to make decisions faster, operate command centers with fewer people, and have higher confidence in achieving mission success."

Lockheed Martin's Dragon Family of Systems as a whole benefit from incorporating the Dragon Dome tool set. Predicated on Lockheed Martin's internally developed DIAMONDShield air and missile defense system, Dragon Dome links data from ISR, command and control, and missile defense assets to create a 4-dimensional view of the battlespace.

Among its many decision-support capabilities are the system's ability to advise operators on the best system to employ to eliminate a threat. This next-generation system has an open, non-proprietary software infrastructure, which enables rapid integration of new capabilities and legacy systems and lowers total ownership costs.

Based on U.S. and NATO standards and communication protocols, Dragon Dome can be easily integrated with coalition forces to greatly expand a given nation's defensive capabilities and improve its performance in collaboration with allied nations. In essence, it provides a given nation with a native advanced C2 system that can network quickly and efficiently with coalition forces.

In addition to Dragon Dome, the DIAMONDShield system has been integrated into the Dragon Shield (transport aircraft) and Dragon Star (mid-range platforms) configurations. All Dragon configurations are net-centric capable to support "Out of the Box" interoperability with NATO, U.S. and Coalition forces.