Northrop Grumman will work with Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works arm, Raytheon Technologies’ intelligence and space business, Long Wave and Crescent Systems as part of a team that will compete for a U.S. Navy program that seeks to replace the service’s fleet of E-6B Mercury aircraft.
Henry Cyr, director of multidomain command and control capture programs at Northrop, said in a statement published Monday the industry team will use its expertise and knowledge to bring nuclear enterprise and command and control capabilities to the military branch.
The Navy expects the E-XX TACAMO program to result in the development of a fleet of aircraft that could provide airborne command, control and communications capabilities for U.S. strategic and non-strategic forces and the National Command Authority.
E-XX will be based on Lockheed’s C-130J Super Hercules military transport planes and will work to enable NCA to establish connectivity with ballistic submarines used for nuclear weapons delivery.