Lockheed Martin Australia has been awarded a $33 million design contract to support the upgrade of the Royal Australian Navy’s Hobart class destroyers’ Aegis combat systems.

This contract falls under the Project SEA 4000 Phase 4 Combat System Design Agent (CSD-A), part of a series of upgrades planned for the three-ship Hobart class which achieved a full operational capability milestone in August.

Lockheed Martin Australia will perform most of the naval combat systems engineering services work in Adelaide, with industry partners including Relegen, a Sydney-based maritime data specialist that will support configuration updates associated with CSD-A activities, and Saab Australia for the Australian interface integration. The work will precede the integration of the Aegis Combat System Baseline 9 (BL9) software which will provide an enduring baseline for the RAN’s ongoing sustainment of the Aegis combat system.

“As the manufacturer of Aegis, the world’s most advanced combat system, Lockheed Martin Australia is proud to deliver and sustain capabilities that play a critical role in the defence of Australia’s interests, as well as those of our allies in the Indo-Pacific,” Lockheed Martin Australia Chief Executive, Warren McDonald said in a company release.

“Lockheed Martin Australia looks forward to collaborating with the Royal Australian Navy, industry partners and the US Navy to ensure the successful upgrade and ongoing sustainment of Australia’s Aegis Combat System,” he added.

This initial Phase 4 contract covers the design of how the Baseline 9 combat system will integrate with the vessel and its sensors, as well as the Saab Australian interface which will also be installed. It will include a requirements definition phase, a systems design review, and systems engineering prior to production which will be covered under a wider-ranging upgrade project for the vessels.

The upgrade will make it easier to adapt ballistic missile defence technology into the vessels, will make the combat systems common with those of the Hunter class frigates which will be delivered with Baseline 9, and will also place the RAN closer to the US Navy, giving the two services an ability to jointly prosecute targets in a taskforce scenario

Because Lockheed Martin is the OEM of Aegis and the system uses a common source library, the company is confident that the design and systems engineering phase will be relatively trouble-free. The upgrade will also include a move to commercial-standard hardware housed in ruggedised containers instead of the previous mil-standard hardware.

Lockheed Martin Australia’s Acting Director of RMS Operations and Integrated Warfare Systems & Sensors Line of Business Lead, Rob Milligan added, “The Lockheed Martin Australia team will leverage the best of Australia’s industrial capability base to deliver complex Aegis Combat System Baseline 9 upgrades, while supporting a harmonised combat systems enterprise across both Hobart class destroyers and future Hunter class frigates.”

Baseline 9 is the current Aegis software configuration used on the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke Flight II destroyers and remaining Ticonderoga class cruisers. The adoption of Baseline 9 follows US approval of the Commonwealth’s planned acquisition of Raytheon SM-2 Block IIIC and RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile (ERAM) (SM-6) Block I surface-to-air missiles for the Hobart class, with the SM-6 in particular having the capability to intercept ballistic missiles.

Other Aegis operators in the region – Japan and South Korea – are also following a similar upgrade path, with Korea charting a parallel course with Australia, and Japan slightly ahead.

The Hobart class upgrade production phase is scheduled to commence in mid-2024.