Northrop Grumman Australia has opened a $20 million systems integration, advanced mission visualisation, and demonstration facility at its Symonston facility in Canberra.

Named Parallax Labs – from the Ancient Greek word ‘parallaxis’ which explains the physical phenomenon whereby an object’s position or direction appears to differ when viewed from different lines of sight – the new lab brings together a distributed systems and software development, integration, and test environment with mission visualisation and demonstration capabilities.

“We are committed to developing and investing in sovereign Australian capability,” Northrop Grumman’s general manager Asia Pacific, Christine Zeitz said in a release. “Parallax Labs represents a critical component of how Northrop Grumman Australia can support projects with complex system architectures and highly-integrated technologies. Importantly, it also serves to facilitate the transfer of technology and the development of Australian critical technology skills that will benefit Australia’s defence industry now and into the future.”

The opening of the lab was attended by the Minister for Defence Industry Melissa Price, and Deputy Secretary Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG), Tony Fraser.