DARPA Tasks Northrop Grumman to Demonstrate Autonomous Aerial Refueling

DARPA Tasks Northrop Grumman to Demonstrate Autonomous Aerial Refueling
July 1, 2010

Two Global Hawk UAVs Will Accomplish a World's First

SAN DIEGO – DARPA announced the award of a $33 million contract to Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) to demonstrate aerial refueling of a NASA Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) by a sister ship. The program will be designated KQ-X.

Northrop Grumman will retrofit two of the high altitude long endurance (HALE) UAVs, one aircraft pumping fuel into the other in flight through a hose-and-drogue refueling system. The aerial refueling engagement will be completely autonomous.

"Demonstrating the refueling of one UAV by another is a historic milestone," said Carl Johnson, vice president, Advanced Concepts for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. "It adds aerial refueling to the list of capabilities that can be accomplished autonomously by Global Hawks; it opens the door to greatly expanded operational utility for UAVs; and, as a side benefit, it promises to increase the safety and reliability of aerial refueling between manned aircraft by reducing pilot workload."

There are several revolutionary aspects to the KQ-X program. Not only will the aerial refueling be autonomous, but since Global Hawks are HALE UAVs, it will also take place at a much higher altitude than has been previously demonstrated with manned aircraft. It will also be the first time that HALE UAVs have flown in formation.

"The importance of aerial refueling is clear in the way military aviation depends on it today," said Jim McCormick, the DARPA program manager for KQ-X. "This demonstration will go a long way towards making those same advantages a reality for the next generation of unmanned aircraft."

Engineering work will be accomplished at the Northrop Grumman Unmanned Systems Development Center in Rancho Bernardo, California. Pilots from NASA, NOAA, and Northrop Grumman will fly the Global Hawks from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, also in California. Sargent Fletcher, Inc. and Sierra Nevada Corporation are major KQ-X subcontractors.

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Northrop Grumman Surpasses Fiber Laser Goals, Receives Phase Two Contract From DARPA

Northrop Grumman Surpasses Fiber Laser Goals, Receives Phase Two Contract From DARPA
June 22, 2010

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has surpassed Phase I goals for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Revolution in Fiber Lasers (RIFL) program that seeks to mature fiber laser technology. As a result, the company has received a contract for Phase II.

"This is an important step in the maturation of fiber laser technology," said Dan Wildt, vice president of Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems sector. "By surpassing Phase I goals, we are in an excellent position for success in Phase II. Success in Phase II will create a powerful springboard for scaling fiber lasers to weapons-class performance levels."

With a 1 kilowatt (kW) single mode fiber amplifier, the company demonstrated a near-perfect beam quality of better than 1.2 and efficiency better than 30 percent, twice the program's goal of 15 percent. Northrop Grumman also demonstrated a polarization extinction ratio of 50:1, and extremely low phase noise, which is essential for the coherent combination of laser chains used to scale power to weapons-class levels.

The Phase I success was a team effort involving Nufern, East Branby, Conn., which supplied high-power amplifiers; Fraunhofer USA, Inc., Plymouth, Mich., which supplied high-power diode laser pumps; and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., which supplied advanced fiber design and analysis.

The $4.6 million, 18-month Phase II DARPA contract calls for scaling power to 3kW in a single mode fiber amplifier. The company has patents on techniques used to facilitate combination of many fiber amplifier beams, while maintaining near-ideal beam quality. The ultimate goal is to develop the technology to 100kW, the power necessary to field a lethal laser weapon.

Northrop Grumman is also working on other laser initiatives that will build on the company's scalable architecture and beam combining expertise. They include:

-- The 2-Dimensional Diffractive Optical Element Beam Combining Demonstration, a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory program under which the company is demonstrating diffractive beam combining using the Joint Department of Defense high-power fiber laser test bed, and

-- The Robust Electric Laser Initiative, a two-year, $8.7 million contract for a High Energy Laser – Joint Technology Office program to produce a design using the company's diffractive optical element beam combining technique to increase power levels to 25kW.


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Northrop Grumman Awarded Contract to Continue Development of New Micro-Gyro for DARPA Program

Northrop Grumman Awarded Contract to Continue Development of New Micro-Gyro for DARPA Program
June 15, 2010

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has been selected to continue development of a miniature navigation grade gyro for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that will provide precision navigation for size and power constrained applications.

The company will develop the final configuration for a stand-alone micro-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Gyro (micro-NMRG) for DARPA's Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (Micro-PNT) program.

Northrop Grumman began the first phase of this effort in October 2005 and was awarded the latest development contract based on past performance, including the successful completion of design, fabrication, and testing of the device, which has met or exceeded the performance goals of each phase.

Northrop Grumman's micro-NMRG technology uses the spins of atomic nuclei to detect the rotation of the gyro and will provide comparable performance to a navigation grade fiber-optic gyro in a small size, low power package. The technology could be used in any application requiring small size and low power precision navigation, including personal and unmanned vehicle navigation in GPS-denied or GPS-challenged locations.

"A miniature gyro that provides precision navigation is an important development for protecting our warfighters by ensuring that they have the accurate positioning information they need at all times, even if GPS is unavailable," said Charles Volk, vice president and chief technology officer of Northrop Grumman's Navigation Systems Division. "This phase of the program will allow us to demonstrate that this new micro gyro technology can provide navigation grade performance in a small package and move it one step closer to the field."

Northrop Grumman offers its customers more than 50 years of navigation experience and produces navigation products utilizing a range of technologies including fiber-optic gyro-based systems, Northrop Grumman's exclusive hemispherical resonator gyro, unique ZLG™ gyros, spinning mass gyros, ring laser gyros, and micro-electro-mechanical-system gyros.


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QinetiQ awarded DARPA Phase 2 contract to continue development of 'first-of-their-kind' sensors

11 August 08

QinetiQ awarded DARPA Phase 2 contract to continue development of 'first-of-their-kind' sensors

A QinetiQ led team has secured a 33-month $22m follow-on research contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in support of its Large Area Coverage Optical Search While Track and Engage (LACOSTE) programme. Following a successful initial phase, DARPA selected QinetiQ to continue development of a new sensor system to provide persistent tactical surveillance and precision tracking capabilities.

The concept is to develop a sensor system that operates at high altitude (~20 km), possibly on an airship or endurance UAV, that detects and simultaneously tracks large numbers of moving vehicles in dense urban areas with a high degree of accuracy, 24-hours a day. In order to achieve this, the sensors need to be high resolution and sensitivity and have a wide field-of-regard, with low mass and system volume.

QinetiQ's solution is the based on novel adaptive coded aperture imaging, an all new disruptive camera technology with a wide range of defence, security, industrial and commercial applications. QinetiQ is being assisted in delivering the LACOSTE programme by Goodrich ISR Systems which is responsible for designing the optical system, assisting with CONOPS and architecture development, and performing laboratory and flight testing.

The second phase of the programme covers the building and flight testing of a working sensor module to meet the LACOSTE goals. This builds on a successful first phase in which new sensing and processing technologies were developed and proven.

"This award is an endorsement of the team’s ability to deliver novel sensing technologies,” explained Dr Chris Slinger, QinetiQ's Principal Investigator on the LACOSTE programme and a QinetiQ Senior Fellow. “Our adaptive coded aperture imaging draws on several elements of QinetiQ’s rich technology base, combining leading edge micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS), optical and sensor physics, signal processing, image recovery, tracking techniques and systems engineering. It is an example of a new wave of disruptive, computational imaging systems that offer orders of magnitude improvement in mass, size, economy and performance when compared to conventional sensor technologies."

Tom Bergeron, President of Goodrich’s ISR Systems business added: "This contract award is an important endorsement of the adaptive coded aperture imaging approach successfully demonstrated by the QinetiQ/Goodrich team during the LACOSTE Phase 1 programme. This novel computational imaging approach has now demonstrated real potential as a disruptive technology for the ISR Market. The Goodrich ISR Systems business has a long history of offering world leading capabilities in real time electro-optical systems in space and on manned and unmanned airborne platforms and is ideally placed to transition this capability into the ISR market.