Angeline Leishman
A Northrop Grumman-built autonomous maritime aircraft system has logged more than 40,000 flight hours since its first deployment with the U.S. Navy in 2009.
The Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator reached the milestone during a routine flight over U.S. Central Command’s area of operations, Northrop said Thursday.
BAMS-D, which was originally developed for a six-month Navy demonstration series, performed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations for the service branch within the CENTCOM AOR over the past 12 years.
“The persistence and dependability of the BAMS-D system and the resilience of the personnel who operate the platform here in 5th Fleet, are essential in sustaining maritime security and freedom of navigation throughout the region,” said Doug Shaffer, a vice president and Triton program manager at Northrop.
The milestone comes after BAMS-D’s successor, the Northrop-built MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft system, finished the first year of its early operating capability deployment under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s jurisdiction.
In late March, the Navy awarded the company a $99 million contract modification to build an additional Triton UAS as part of lot 5 low-rate initial production efforts.
