Unmanned surface vehicles and unmanned aircraft can be used to provide persistent littoral surveillance, Northrop Grumman demonstrated in an exercise conducted in early August.
The company, co-operating with the US Navy and Harris, demonstrated some of the components of Navy Expeditionary Overwatch, a littoral protection system that could eventually involve multiple UAS and USVs sharing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information with the navy's littoral combat ships and with ground vehicles and stations.
"Clearly there is military utility in having UAVs and USVs doing this dull, dirty work of persistent ISR," says Larry Datko, the manager of expeditionary warfare programs for Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems' Naval & Marine Systems division.
The demonstration was held 5-6 August at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dam Neck in Virginia Beach, Virginia, using systems including an SPQ-9B radar, a ScanEagle UAS and a Nighthawk USV.
One new addition was the Harris SeaLancet TR-1944/U multiband network radio, which "allowed us for the first time to get the range we wanted," Datko says, with the USV sending live streaming video "well beyond" 16nm.
The next step for the program is to continue doing regular demonstrations and adding more and different unmanned systems.
"Northrop Grumman has an interoperability working group that is planning on bringing together multiple UAVs, USVs, UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] into tactically significant scenarios," Datko says. Eventually other vehicles, such as the marinized Israel Aerospace Industries Heron, could be added to the mix.
Source: Flight Daily News
