The Digital Pathfinder project demonstrated how the company’s fully digital engineering ecosystem reduces engineering rework, accelerates schedule and reduces costs, offering advantages to customers on future aircraft programs. By utilizing real-world experiences gained on programs, including the B-21 Raider, the company continues to evolve its collaborative digital ecosystem, which connects the company, customers and supplier partners through the design, development and test phases on a variety of current and future programs.

“We continue to refine these digital tools and capabilities to continuously improve them for future efforts,” said Colin Miller, vice president, engineering, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems. “This project demonstrates how high-fidelity models within our digital ecosystem serve as a single source of truth to streamline testing and certification on future aircraft, significantly saving cost and time for our customer.”

The digital ecosystem cut engineering rework and redesign to less than one percent, compared to the 15-20% experienced using traditional methods. The demonstration also leveraged high-fidelity models combined with rigorous and approved model validation schemes to reduce requirements for ground and flight tests. Looking forward, these models show the potential to significantly reduce the workload required to determine airworthiness, offering further cost and schedule savings opportunities.

Through Digital Pathfinder, Northrop Grumman’s high integrity digital thread connected engineers, customers and stakeholders in a virtual environment, allowing them to proactively foresee and solve the types of problems that typically plague acquisition programs up front and early — greatly improving program performance.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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The 74 satellites include the Tranche 2 Beta and Tranche 2 Alpha configurations. Tranche 2 Beta satellites incorporate new communications technologies into the PWSA, including S-Band, Ultra High Frequency Satellite Communications and Integrated Broadcast Service, while the Tranche 2 Alpha satellites are a continuation of Northrop Grumman’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer satellites awarded in 2022.

Blake Bullock, vice president, military space systems, Northrop Grumman, said, “Space Development Agency’s vision is to field critical capabilities at an extremely rapid pace, and Northrop Grumman continues to demonstrate that we are up to the challenge. As we move into detailed design for our Tranche 2 satellites, we’re executing and on-track with our Tranche 1 offerings and evaluating future opportunities with SDA programs. We are delivering on our commitments and are focused on helping SDA make the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture a success.”

Northrop Grumman is a leading contractor providing both space vehicles and ground systems for the SDA’s PWSA, a next-generation constellation in low-Earth orbit.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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This industry-leading agreement, facilitated by Future Tech Enterprise, gives Northrop Grumman access to NVIDIA’s extensive portfolio of AI and generative AI software, its platforms and frameworks, including NVIDIA Omniverse.

The agreement also opens research and development pathways, enabling Northrop Grumman to quickly apply advanced AI technologies across its portfolio of capabilities while also increasing operational efficiency.

“NVIDIA’s AI platforms will help us deliver Northrop Grumman’s advanced capabilities to our customers faster and with greater effect,” said Vern Boyle, vice president, Northrop Grumman Microelectronics Center.

“NVIDIA’s AI platform is at the forefront of the industry, driving innovation that solves difficult challenges,” said Anthony Robbins, vice president for North America public sector at NVIDIA. “Northrop Grumman is the latest example of how businesses and organizations around the world are increasingly using NVIDIA AI software to deliver on the enormous potential of AI.”

Source: Northrop Grumman

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Northrop Grumman will rapidly evolve the DIA’s collection, processing, and analytics tools by:

• Leveraging model-based, systems engineering to consolidate and integrate the DIA’s technical capabilities.
• Implementing leading-edge solutions that meet the needs of the rapidly changing intelligence environment.
• Applying digital engineering to produce operational efficiencies and affordability.

Jennifer Walsmith, vice president of cyber and information solutions, Northrop Grumman, said, “We’re transforming the digital ecosystem for the intelligence community to streamline inputs and provide actionable information at the speed needed to outpace evolving threats.”

The award, known as Neptune Phoenix, is a nine-year, single-award contract that includes lifecycle management, engineering, design, development, purchasing, prototyping, test and evaluation, deployment, and data analysis for current and future Radio Frequency and Electro Optical sensor systems.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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“Rob brings proven leadership experience running complex businesses in the aerospace and defense industry,” said Kathy Warden, chair, chief executive officer and president, Northrop Grumman. “Building on Tom’s leadership in growing our space portfolio, I’m confident Rob will lead this team to continue innovating and delivering for our customers and shareholders.”

Fleming is currently vice president and general manager of the Strategic Space Systems division in the Space Systems sector. Previously, he led the Space Systems strategy and business development organization. In his nearly 18-year career with Northrop Grumman, he has led different businesses and functions in many of the company’s sectors. He began his career as an aerospace systems engineer.

He holds a bachelor’s and a doctorate degree in electrical engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, is a graduate of the Harvard Business School General Management Program and holds a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Fleming also serves in the U.S. Navy Reserve.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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Northrop Grumman is one of the five industry partners named to the consortium to design, develop, and deploy advanced data-centric capabilities for the Air Force and Space Force. The company will apply technical expertise in systems engineering, data management, secure processing and connectivity to shape how data is harnessed by the Air Force in coordination with the Joint Force to make faster decisions in the multi-domain battlespace.

The Advanced Battle Management System Digital Infrastructure Consortium will strengthen Joint warfighting to support the Department of Defense’s JADC2 concept. The industry team will support the Government in building the technical and business roadmaps to deploy digital infrastructure to the warfighter on accelerated timelines.

“As the Department of the Air Force continues to move ABMS forward, Northrop Grumman’s expertise in advanced networking, sensors, software, platform integration, autonomy and manned-unmanned teaming across all domains will continue to support the emerging JADC2 needs of the DOD,” said Tim Frei, sector vice president, research and advanced design, Northrop Grumman. “Our work with the DOD coupled with our own internal research and development efforts gives us access to the critical pathfinder capabilities that will connect the Joint Force.”

The ABMS Digital Infrastructure Consortium has four focus areas:

• Secure Processing: Provide the common platform hardware and software for processing and storage through multi-level security.
• Connectivity: Provide resilient, secure, and well-managed support for communication of battle management data.
• Data Management: Provide tools for warfighters and developers of battle management applications to access key data more easily across security boundaries and in degraded environments.
• Open Architecture: Use open standards and commercial best practices enabling tech refresh, flexibility, and resilience to losses and interruptions.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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Northrop Grumman’s Freedom Radios provide open architecture, platform agnostic, cyber-secure solutions to support a wide range of integrated communications and networking mission functions across domains.

“Through this Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) contract, we will be able to mature an open architecture, SATCOM-enabled Freedom Radio solution designed to help create a truly interconnected JADC2 network architecture across air, land, sea and space,” said Jenna Paukstis, vice president, communications solutions, Northrop Grumman. “Our SATCOM-enabled Freedom Radio will allow warfighters to quickly gather and share information from space assets to help them make more informed decisions via an interconnected JADC2 network.”

This new contract expands the scope of a December 2019 AFRL award. The purpose of the contract is to demonstrate a SATCOM-enabled networking radio in a relevant mission environment designed to provide secure and resilient mission data that can be shared from space to multiple receiving platforms in near-real time. This enables warfighters to quickly analyze information, enhance situational awareness and help the DoD realize its vision for an interconnected, JADC2 network.

The foundation of the SATCOM-enabled Freedom Radio is designed using Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Communications, Navigation and Identification (ICNI) system and market-leading Software Development Kit as a method of implementing new, open architecture capabilities onto the company’s series of Software Defined Radios. These advancements are designed to accelerate and rapidly deploy new capabilities, including third-party industry solutions.

Northrop Grumman is planning to conduct a proof-of-concept demonstration for its SATCOM-enabled Freedom Radio later this year. This demonstration will be blending third-party vendor technologies into Northrop Grumman’s core open architectures to support the rapid capability investments made by the DoD to support JADC2 efforts. This collaboration supports Northrop Grumman’s effort to create new advanced networking technologies that benefit the warfighter and all branches of the U.S. military.

Northrop Grumman’s broad portfolio of Freedom Radios are currently used on a number of platforms to help warfighters across multiple branches of the military easily communicate and securely share actionable information across air, land, sea and space.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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ICS combines an open architecture and a unique set of track management and situational awareness capabilities to facilitate the creation, visualization and distribution of the common operating picture. This picture provides military commanders the information they need to plan, execute and manage military operations.

“Northrop Grumman in the UK has a long history of providing enhanced value and commercial flexibility for the MoD,” said Katharine Sealy, director, National Security Solutions, Northrop Grumman UK. “Our agile approach to C2 software development and open architectural design philosophy helps to ensure that UK forces maintain an information advantage.”

ICS is developed and supported in the UK, and it has continuously evolved to provide the core C2 systems for UK MoD and NATO HQs/ships for over 25 years. It is also fielded by many other nations to power their national C2 systems.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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The USSF’s tactically responsive launch concept seeks to introduce speed, agility, and flexibility into the launch enterprise in order to respond to dynamic changes in the space domain or an operational theater and insert or replace assets on orbit much faster than standard timelines to meet emerging combatant command requirements.

Pegasus, the world’s first privately-developed commercial space launch vehicle, is an air-launched three-staged rocket carried aloft by Northrop Grumman’s specially modified “Stargazer” L-1011 aircraft. Shortly after its release from Stargazer, at approximately 40,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, Pegasus ignited its first stage, beginning its successful flight carrying TacRL-2 to its intended orbit.

“This Pegasus launch was a clear demonstration of our team’s ability to provide rapid and responsive operational needs,” said Rich Straka, vice president, launch vehicles, Northrop Grumman. “Our team was able to execute the design, integration and testing of the TacRL-2 launch vehicle in less than four months from contract award.”

This is the 45th launch of Pegasus, which uses solid propulsion to offer maximum responsiveness by enabling launch to a wide variety of orbits on short timelines. This capability provides customers with the flexibility to operate from virtually anywhere on Earth with minimal ground support requirements. Pegasus has launched more than 90 satellites into low earth orbit from five separate launch sites in the United States, Europe and the Marshall Islands.

Source: Northrop Grumman

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To mitigate this challenge and support the continued use of these wideband radios, DARPA developed the Wideband Adaptive RF Protection (WARP) program. WARP is exploring the development of tunable filters to manage external interference as well as tunable signal canceller architectures to address self-interference. The goal is to develop technologies that are tunable over wide bandwidths with low-loss and high-linearity that can protect defense and commercial wideband systems.

Today, DARPA announced the research teams selected to tackle WARP’s R&D objectives. These teams will explore a diverse set of technology approaches that include intrinsically switched electromagnetic (EM) resonators, multiferroics, acoustics, and photonics, which will all come together with new circuit architectures, heterogeneous device integration, and advanced RF packaging. The technical approaches will also include embedded sensing of the EM spectrum, which provides adaptive control of the tuning elements and enables the hardware to react to environmental changes.

“The performers on WARP are exploring a range of novel approaches to develop new circuit architectures for tunable filters and cancellers,” said DARPA program manager, Timothy Hancock. “It is expected that the adaptive filter technology will help protect wideband digital receivers from signal saturation in congested environments and the adaptive cancellers will enable same-frequency simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) applications over much wider bandwidths than can be achieved today.”

WARP is divided into two primary research areas. The first focuses on the development of new filter architectures that have inherently wideband tuning characteristics to cover the 2-18 GHz band of interest. The research teams selected to take on this area include the University of Pennsylvania; BAE Systems; Raytheon Technologies; Northrop Grumman Corporation; Collins Aerospace, a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp.; and Indiana Microelectronics.

The second research area is focusing on reconfigurable signal cancellers in the 0.1-6 GHz band of interest while supporting large time delay spreads to handle dispersive signal leakage paths. The research teams working under this area include BAE Systems, L3Harris Technologies, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Source: DARPA

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