Niteworks 3: Improving Ground Based Air Defence - Case study - GOV.UK

The Joint Sensor and Engagement Networks Delivery Team (JSENS DT) is responsible for the delivery of the Future Force Ground Based Air Defence and Air Surveillance programme (FF GBAD AS).

The first phase will provide a Battle Management, Command, Control, Computers, Communications and Intelligence (BMC4I) system integrated with the Land Ceptor Missile System and ground based

radars to provide an integrated safe and effective ground based defence.

To avoid a capability gap a procurement exercise was conducted against demanding timescales. Fundamental to the success of the procurement strategy was the creation of robust and

independent, industry informed System Requirements Document (SRD).

Following the success of this first phase of work, Niteworks was then tasked with Phase 2: to support the creation of a GBAD capability integration plan by conducting research into the

Defence Lines of Development (DLODs) to ‘kick-start’ the development of the comprehensive DLOD GBAD Programme.

Extensive engagement with the military stakeholder community and with industry enabled the team to validate the approach, assumptions, and requirements.

Across the two phases, the Niteworks team hosted seven Military Judgement Panels in order to derive detailed user requirements. The team planned and facilitated five well supported Industry

Workshops, collaborated extensively with the Capability Integration Group and organised a number of working sessions in each DLOD area. Informed OA was also undertaken to assess GBAD system

performance timelines to inform SRD Measures of Performance.

Draft output documents were circulated regularly to the military stakeholder community and to industry to confirm that the requirement set was realistic and appropriate. Industry was able to

give meaningful feedback on how the capability could be developed within an extremely short timeframe.

The project significantly raised the level of understanding in the Delivery Team and military community in topics such as safety, radar and missile system performance and the related

architectural implications. This enabled the Delivery Team to deliver a rigorous and comprehensive SRD as part of the procurement exercise. Industry contribution to the SRD improved their

understanding of the Ministry Of Defence’s (MOD) requirements and allowed them to consider how they could best contribute to meeting the needs of defence.

The Niteworks project allowed the Delivery Team to successfully compete the replacement capability with a set of artefacts that included an industry informed set of requirements,

architectures and a capability integration plan covering the DLODs.

As a result, the contract to provide the capability was awarded less than 30 months from the start of the first Niteworks project.