MELBOURNE, Florida, May 11, 2026, 12:08 (EDT)
L3Harris Technologies has been selected by the U.S. Air Force to develop key parts of the secure digital infrastructure for the Advanced Battle Management System, or ABMS, the company said, giving the defense contractor a larger role in the service’s push to link commanders, sensors and weapons through one battlefield network. The company did not disclose a contract value.
The timing matters because ABMS is not a side project. It is the Air Force piece of the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort, known as CJADC2, which aims to let military leaders use shared data and analytics to make faster decisions across air, land, sea, space and cyber operations.
L3Harris said the work will strengthen ABMS data integration and networking, a plain but central job: pulling information from multiple sources into a real-time view of the battlefield. Kathy Crandall, president of Mission Networks in L3Harris’ Space & Mission Systems business, said the infrastructure would give troops “more secure, timely and usable information” and help them “connect sensors and shooters across domains.” UK Defence Journal
The award also lands while defense investors are watching whether command-and-control programs can move from experiments to fielded systems. L3Harris reported April 30 that first-quarter orders rose to $7.8 billion and backlog reached $40.7 billion, while revenue increased 12% to $5.7 billion.
ABMS has been a crowded field. In 2022, L3Harris was named to an Air Force ABMS Digital Infrastructure Consortium with peers including Leidos, Northrop Grumman and SAIC to help define network engineering, systems engineering and architecture plans. That earlier work was meant to set the road map; the new selection points to more concrete infrastructure development.
The Air Force has already started putting pieces of the broader network into use. An ABMS-related Tactical Operations Center-Light system saw its first operational deployment in support of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, and the Air Force said 16 prototypes were in Airmen’s hands as part of rapid experimentation.
For L3Harris, the work sits close to a fast-growing part of the portfolio. Its Space & Mission Systems segment, which includes mission networks, posted first-quarter revenue of $2.99 billion, up 24% from a year earlier, helped by intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs as well as higher volume in space, mission networks and maritime programs.
Chief Executive Christopher Kubasik said in the company’s earnings release that L3Harris had a strong start to the year with “robust orders and revenue growth,” and said demand was rising as the “future of warfare” drives near-term priorities. That is the investor backdrop for ABMS: digital networks are becoming part of the weapons budget, not just the IT budget. L3Harris® Fast. Forward.
The risk is execution. CJADC2 is not a single system, the Government Accountability Office has said, but a way to use data and analytics to make and communicate better battlefield decisions. That means ABMS must work across older systems, classified networks, service-specific tools and contractor-built products; schedule slips, budget changes or data-sharing gaps could blunt the program’s value.
L3Harris said it will use modern data processing and networking technologies to build the ABMS digital infrastructure. Until the Air Force releases more detail on funding, schedule and scope, the selection is best read as a strategic foothold rather than a near-term revenue number.
