Northrop Grumman Showcases Autonomous Maritime Capabilities at U.S. Navy’s Exercise.

Northrop Grumman Corporation in collaboration with industry partners participated in the U.S. Navy’s Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) last month in Newport, Rhode Island. The company demonstrated advanced capabilities in the command and control of future unmanned maritime missions and the ability to more effectively deliver critical information to the warfighter in contested environments.

Northrop Grumman’s Fire Scout autonomous surrogate launches a sonobuoy as part the 2018 Advanced Naval Training Exercise in Newport, Rhode Island.

“Northrop Grumman’s expertise in networked sensors and advanced mission management for autonomous aircraft systems provides significant offensive and defensive capabilities for our customers in the maritime environment,” said Dan Redman, ANTX program manager, Northrop Grumman. “By showcasing how sensors can be airdropped from a Fire Scout surrogate, we are demonstrating future mission applications for this platform.”

Northrop Grumman’s seabed warfare capabilities were also highlighted at this year’s exercise. A central part of this demonstration was Northrop Grumman’s µSAS and real-time automated target recognition technologies. The µSAS is a low size, weight and power, high-performance payload that can operate off a man-portable autonomous underwater vehicle for real-time classification of mine-like objects.

“This technology is an example of leveraging digital transformation to rapidly provide software defined, hardware enabled capabilities to the fleet,” said Alan Lytle, vice president, undersea systems, Northrop Grumman. “Integration of unmanned and autonomous capabilities into the battle space reduces staffing required to conduct operations and risk to personnel, while supporting our nation’s continued undersea superiority.”

 Low-SWAP, Information Assurance/Anti-Tamper Enabled, High-Performance, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture SONAR for Micro-UUVs

The three-day annual exercise was developed to demonstrate future Navy technologies in a collaborative, low-risk environment. Government, academia and industry participants gathered to showcase new capabilities to push the boundaries of what is possible in a complex environment. Northrop Grumman was partnered in the exercise with Physical Optics Corp, Ultra Electronics USSI, Hydroid, Optimum Solutions and Silvus.

Northrop Grumman’s seabed warfare capabilities and multi-domain unmanned system integration were highlighted at the demonstration. These included advanced mission management, which enables centralized collaborative mission execution and control using multiple unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV) and unmanned surface vehicles as well as a Fire Scout surrogate unmanned aerial vehicle. The demonstration featured subsurface to above surface communications with cross-domain status, detection and tracking.

The exercise also highlighted the benefits of an open architecture approach, showcasing the ability to rapidly integrate multiple capabilities into a relevant mission scenario. Mission planning, control and monitoring will be achieved via a remote tactical operations center and from Northrop Grumman’s maritime operations center.