In the same day that unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) experts at Northrop Grumman Corp. completed the first flight of the new Navy MQ-4C Triton maritime patrol UAV, Navy experts are making plans to upgrade the UAV’s software. Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., on 22 May awarded a $15.3 million contract modification to the Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems sector in Bethpage, N.Y., to upgrade the Triton’s software from Windows XP to Windows 7. The contract modification concerns the MQ-4C Triton Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) systems development and demonstration phase. Also on 22 May Northrop Grumman experts completed the first flight of the Triton BAMS high-altitude UAV at the Northrop Grumman manufacturing facility in Palmdale, Calif. Triton is designed to fly maritime surveillance missions for as long as 24 hours at altitudes of more than 10 miles to enable coverage out to 2,000 nautical miles, Northrop Grumman officials say. The UAV’s suite of sensors can detect and classify different types of ships automatically. The Triton will be a crucial component of the Navy’s 21st century strategy for conducting surveillance of surface ship and submarine traffic in the vast Pacific and other oceans around the globe. The […]
Latest Navy Drone to upgrade from XP to Windows 7.