Northrop Grumman Wins BAMS

Northrop Grumman has been awarded the system development and Demonstration (SDD) contract for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS UAS). From Navy Times.

Northrop Grumman will build the Navy’s much-anticipated Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) drone, beating out Boeing and the Lockheed Martin-General Atomics team for the $1.16 billion developmental contract.

The deal, announced by the Navy late Tuesday, includes funding for two unmanned aircraft, a systems integration lab, and two mission control systems: one primary base system and a second designed for a forward operating base.

This is a huge boost for Northrop Grumman, who now has the contracts for the two most important unmanned systems contracts to date for the Navy. If you recall, last year Northrop Grumman won the contract for the N-UCAS system as well. Some of the details of the BAMS contract.

BAMS will serve as an adjunct to the Boeing-built P-8 Poseidon — the sea service’s 737-800-based, submarine-hunting manned aircraft. Naval officials said the fact that Boeing will build the P-8 did not affect the BAMS decision...

At 68 aircraft, the BAMS fleet will be the world’s largest purchase of long-endurance marinized UAVs...

The 68 UAVs will include six developmental aircraft: three test birds, three low-rate initial production (LRIP) aircraft to be used for operational evaluation, Balderson said.

Under its own steam and on its own dime, Northrop has already kicked off a risk-reduction project that has logged 18 flights and 40 hours of flight testing to look at communications, sensor and bandwidth management systems.

The RQ-4N’s first delivery is expected in late fiscal 2011, Dishman said.

You can check out the specifications of the RQ-4N on the official BAMS page on Northrop Grumman's website.