BRUSSELS — A consortium led by Lockheed Martin UK unveiled a Ground-Based Air Defense (GBAD) concept for NATO, designed to enable data sharing and interoperability among member states' national assets. This proposal is part of the second phase of the NATO Modular GBAD program, which aims to address aerial threats at very short- to medium-range distances.
The consortium includes Leonardo, MBDA, and Indra. The NATO Support and Procurement Agency leads the Modular GBAD program, which launched in 2023 with a budget of approximately €20 million. Participating nations in the program include Romania, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, and the U.K., while the U.S. holds an observer role. These nations operate various air defense systems, such as Patriot and SAMP/T.
Richard Turner, business development manager for command and control and complex systems at Lockheed Martin, said the current lack of commonality in air defense. "There is no common thing currently, especially within GBAD, maybe apart from Link 16, that does connect the vast majority of NATO nations where a nation with system A operating alongside another nation with system B can seamlessly operate and share data." Turner said. The proposed GBAD system uses software to connect participating nations' sensors to other nations' command nodes or individual systems.
Ignacio Ojeda González-Posada, business development manager for air defense at Indra, said: "The challenge is not so much integrating expensive assets such as the IRIS-T air defense system into a network, which is relatively easy, rather it is incorporating cheaper ones, such as small anti-drone systems or acoustic detectors, which often operate independently or do not feed into a common tactical picture."
The first phase of the Modular GBAD program, which focused on system architecture, was completed in 2025. The NATO Support and Procurement Agency awarded concept studies to Airbus, Aselsan, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Thales LAS for this initial phase. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Airbus were subsequently selected for the second phase of the program to address system modularity. This second phase will last twelve months and will include modeling to replicate system connectivity. A third stage of the program will select a proposal to advance to the integration of emerging technologies.
No independent assessment of Lockheed Martin UK’s claims was available.