Jane Edwards
Australia’s defense department accepted its first Hobart-class air warfare destroyer equipped with the Lockheed Martin-built Aegis combat system during a ceremony held Friday in Adelaide.
Australia has become the sixth allied country to receive a destroyer ship with the Aegis system, Lockheed said Friday.
Vince Di Pietro, CEO of Lockheed’s Australian arm, said the company is prepared to equip Australia’s future frigates and other programs with the Aegis system.
Aegis is a command-and-control, automated weapons control platform designed to support cooperative engagement and network-centric warfare operations as well as host missile technologies.
The ship is the first of three Hobart-class multimission destroyers to be equipped with the Aegis weapon system as part of Australia’s SEA 4000 program that aims to deliver the vessels by the end of 2019.
A team of engineers at Lockheed has installed the Aegis computer program onboard the second Hobart-class destroyer ship – Brisbane.
