The U.S. Navy awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to build six more MQ-8C unmanned helicopters based on the Bell 407, bringing to 14 the number of new, larger Fire Scouts under contract. The Navy plans to acquire a total of 30 MQ-8Cs under a rapid development effort that calls for deployment next year.
Grumman
July 27, 2012 - 11:42am
June 25, 2012 - 4:00pm
A Bloomberg Government report released June 17, said the U.S. Air Force has experienced 129 drone accidents in the past 15 years, with aircraft produced by Northrup Grumman Corp. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems involved in more of the accidents than those of any other manufacturers.
May 25, 2012 - 11:30am
Northrop Grumman gained a $1.7 billion (€1.2 billion) contract to supply five Block 40 Global Hawk UAVs with advanced multi-platform radar technology insertion program (MP-RTIP) radars for the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) program.
May 16, 2012 - 5:26am
Northrop Grumman (Stand 2321) announced here at EBACE that Cessna has chosen its navigation systems for the Citation Latitude business jet. One selection is the LCR-100 attitude and heading reference system, which uses both inertial navigation and GPS information.
May 4, 2012 - 2:00pm
Northrop Grumman received a contract from the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) to build the MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter based on the Bell 407 airframe. The contract, announced April 23, has a not-to-exceed cost ceiling of $262 million for two demonstration and six production MQ-8Cs.
March 30, 2012 - 11:29am
The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) reported progress in arming the MQ-8B Fire Scout UAV, which will be the Navy’s first sea-based unmanned system to carry weapons. The command said its structures rotary-wing division and the Northrop Grumman Fire Scout team are “working briskly” at Webster Field Annex in Patuxent River, Md., to support an urgent operational needs request from Naval Forces Central Command.
January 12, 2012 - 3:20pm
Former Grumman and Gulfstream Aerospace chief test pilot Robert Smyth, 84, died Tuesday at his home at the Leeward Air Ranch in Ocala, Fla. During his career at Grumman, he test flew the F9F Cougar, F11F Tiger, A-6A Intruder, F-14A Tomcat and the Gulfstream I twin turboprop, in addition to helping with the Apollo Lunar Module development in the 1960s. Smyth joined Gulfstream in 1981 and retired in 1993 as vice president of operations. His family is planning a remembrance ceremony.
January 2, 2012 - 4:10am
It is with some justification that Theodore “Teddy” Forstmann, the founder of Forstmann Little & Company, is described in aviation circles as “the man who saved Gulfstream.”
December 23, 2011 - 9:00am
Northrop Grumman is hoping that funds to re-engine the first two operational E-8C JSTARS radar surveillance aircraft will be provided in the Fiscal 2013 budget next year. The test bed aircraft is now flying with JT8D-219 engines that Northrop Grumman has modified with a new pneumatic system that it claims “vastly improves reliability and the hardware’s life cycle.” Although the JT8D is hardly new technology, the 17 operational E-8Cs are powered by even older JT3Ds. A $1.7 billion program to replace them was started some years ago, and the test bed first flew with JT8Ds in December 2008.
