Lockheed Martin has modernized the primary system used by the U.S. Marine Corps to coordinate the flight operations of all its aircraft.

The Theater Battle Management Core System, or TBMCS, is a Lockheed Martin product and operated within the U.S. Marine Corps Tactical Air Command Center, and was enhanced with the Marine Corps Air Mission Planner application.

It integrates intelligence, targeting, and airspace applications that support coordination of precision engagement, safe passage and warnings of threats.

Lockheed said that for the Marines, it updated the system's airborne command-and-control capabilities for tasking orders that coordinate flying operations. The work involved replacing 1.5 million lines of legacy code with 500,000 lines of modernized code.

"Replacing 18 years of legacy applications was a challenge," said Dr. Rob Smith, vice president of C4ISR for Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions. "By collaborating with the Marines on a regular basis we provided a system with the functionality that met all their expectations."

C4ISR is the acronym for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The modernization was tested in March at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. The Air Force, Navy and Army, whose own command-and-control systems are linked to the TBMCS, participated in the evaluation.