NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER, Md. The U.S. Navy is developing a new mine countermeasure (MCM) sensor suite for the MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned autonomous helicopter that will enable the unmanned aerial system (UAS) to find and localize mines and obstacles on land and at sea.

YUMA PROVING GROUND, YUMA, Ariz. Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) report that they recently jointly tested a universal messaging standard for Joint-All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) communications during the “Purple Guardian” field demonstration at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. 

Virtualization software and model-based design provide a path that not only enables system designers to maintain legacy software for avionics and other mission-critical systems but also makes it possible to migrate that code to modern higher-performance processing platforms, for example from an older PowerPC-based VME board over to a new x86 or Arm-based VME or OpenVPX module.

Military helicopter avionics upgrades like those for Future Vertical Lift platforms make data and modular-agnostic hardware a priority for defense electronics manufacturers. As systems and electronics evolve, many of these advances will have to comply with open architecture standards like the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and must leverage a modular open systems approach (MOSA) to ease cost and time-to-market pressure.

BOULDER, Colo. Northrop Grumman has won a contract worth $99.6 million from the U.S. Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific to provide mission-critical capabilities for Relay Ground Station-Asia (RGS-A) under which the company will design, develop, integrate, test, and deliver the first of the next-generation relay ground stations to support legacy and future missile-launch and missile-warning detection satellites.

AUSTRALIA. Northrop Grumman Australia has entered into an agreement with Australian electronics engineering company IntelliDesign for hardware design services and contract manufacturing of Secure Communications Solution (SCS) devices.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. and DALLAS, Texas. Northrop Grumman Corporation and AT&T have entered into a collaboration agreement to research and develop a digital battle network, powered by AT&T 5G and Northrop Grumman's advanced mission systems, to support the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).