Lockheed Martin Demonstrates SUMMIT Technology Aboard Test Vehicle

The SUMMIT (supervision of unmanned mission management by interactive teams) technology of Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) was demonstrated by Lockheed Martin on board a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) test vehicle at the Panama City Naval Surface Warfare Center.

In conventional vehicles, one operator sits at one console and looks into one specific task. This mission-centric SUMMIT program enables operators at a single console to attend to multiple tasks at all ground-control station services, thus optimizing productivity of the resources at the LCS Mission Package.

The demonstration event was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) during its Organic Mine Countermeasures Future Naval Capability Demonstration. Sailors of the LCS Mine Warfare Detachment carried out several simulated mine sweeping and mine hunting missions in the Gulf of Mexico and St. Andrews Bay with the help of a combination of simulated and live remote mine-hunting systems and unmanned surface vehicles. At the time of the demonstration, one of the sailors commented that the SUMMIT program made their task much easier.

Lockheed Martin ATL created and assessed the SUMMIT technology as part of the two-phase, $4.7 million contract offered in 2008 by ONR. Although SUMMIT belongs to the LCS Mine Countermeasures mission package, it can be extended to other platforms and mission packages.