Northrop Grumman has awarded a contract from the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command for technologically advanced navigation and recovery systems.
The U.S. Department of Defense announced on Tuesday an agreement worth about $11,6 for qualification testing and integration of the Redundancy unmanned air vehicle common automatic recovery systems and multi-platform anti-jam Global Positioning System navigation antenna integrated upgrades into the MQ-8C Fire Scout aircraft.
Work will be performed in San Diego, California (90%); and Moss Point, Mississippi (10%), and is expected to be completed in January 2023.
The MQ-8C Fire Scout is the U.S. Navy’s newest unmanned helicopter and has increased speed, a higher ceiling, over twice the fuel endurance, and an improved payload capacity compared to earlier versions.
The Fire Scout’s airframe is based on the commercial Bell 407, a mature helicopter with more than 1,600 airframes produced and over 4.4 million flight hours. Combined with the maturity of Northrop Grumman’s autonomous systems architecture, Fire Scout meets customer requirements for a ship-based and land-based autonomous systems.