Matthew Nelson
The U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command plans to award Northrop Grumman a task order under a basic ordering agreement to examine the possibility of updating an unmanned helicopter platform’s mission processing unit and adding weapons into the air vehicle.
NAVAIR wants the company’s aerospace systems sector to determine a potential MPU update or alternative for the MQ-8C Fire Scout, according to a notice posted Thursday on the beta SAM website.
The command also seeks to reduce the risk of weaponization by conducting early design efforts for potential weapon systems integration into the current architecture of the unmanned aircraft system.
MQ-8C is designed to travel up to 150 nautical miles and carry more than 700 pounds of payload.
NAVAIR determined that Northrop is the only company that possesses technical data, experience and knowledge to help the service branch address MQ-8C integration study requirements.
