Northrop Grumman and NASA have completed flight control testing of the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial system at the Grand Sky testing facility in North Dakota.
Northrop Grumman has unveiled a new 36,000-square-foot facility in Grand Forks, North Dakota, that is built to foster the use of autonomous systems. The company said Friday the facility is located the Grand Sky Unmanned Aerial Systems Business and Aviation Park and focused on research and development, operations and mission analysis, aircraft maintenance, maintainer, operator and pilot training efforts. […] More
Northrop Grumman has conducted an inaugural flight test of a multispectral sensor payload onboard a high-altitude long-range unmanned aircraft system. Northrop said Wednesday it integrated the MS-177 sensor into an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone during the test flight held at the company’s facility in Palmdale, California. The sensor is designed to find targets with broad area search and sensing methods as well as help operators fix, track and […] More
Northrop Grumman has pushed back the test flight of its RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft equipped with a United Technologies Corp.-built multispectral imaging sensor technology to late January, Inside Defense reported Wednesday. Rachel Karas writes testing of the MS-177 sensor-equipped Global Hawk was originally scheduled to occur in late December. The report said Northrop postponed all the company’s test […] More
A business unit of  United Technologies Corp. has received a contract from the U.S. Air Force to update the company’s MS-177 imaging sensor system in efforts to increase the technology’s resolution and coverage. UTC Aerospace Systems will design, build, manufacture and deliver updated MS-177A sensors for potential deployment by the Air Force in 2019, UTC said Monday. The service branch will determine eventual sensor […] More
The U.S. Air Force has awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman for modernization work on a ground segment the service branch uses to control Global Hawk autonomous unmanned aircraft systems. Northrop said Monday the work will include a modular and scalable cockpit architecture, as well as an updated command and control capacity across all missions and sensors. “Global Hawk […] More
A Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial system underwent a flight test designed to evaluate the drone’s ability to connect with the U.S. Air Force‘s distributed common ground system. The RQ-4 performed more than 30 hours of endurance flight during recent interoperability assessments held at Edwards Air Force Base in California, Northrop said Tuesday. […] More