Enabling Off-the-Shelf Autonomous Naval Warfare

December 1, 2024

Northrop Grumman
San Diego, CA
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.northropgrumman.com

The nature of naval warfare is often unpredictable. As nearpeer adversaries work to rapidly increase their total number of vessels, uncrewed systems will play an important role in enabling the U.S. Navy to continue to project power and ensure sailors are able to execute missions.

Northrop Grumman has now developed two mission-focused autonomous capabilities for its smaller unmanned aircraft platforms, called Helix and Scion, that will rapidly transform existing commercial uncrewed platforms into resilient and survivable combat and surveillance systems. Executing real-world mission scenarios at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Silent Swarm 2024 exercise, these autonomous technologies demonstrated Northrop Grumman’s readiness to fill existing maritime domain awareness gaps and securely find, fix and track elements in maritime operations.

The Navy is actively exploring emerging technologies that enable uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) and uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) to extend the range of its communications and electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. Northrop Grumman’s Scion – a multifunction EW payload – was created and tailored specifically to the needs of surface operations and can connect to commercially available USV platforms using a common interface. Helix combines an array of uncrewed platforms, payloads and software, allowing for autonomous, multi-domain and multi-modal operations. Its ecosystem is further complemented by digital twin solutions, providing operators with a three-dimensional, dynamic view of the battlespace in a virtual environment.

“We developed an initial proof of concept for Scion’s capabilities for the Navy in 2023,” said Matt O’Driscoll, Chief Engineer for Scion, Northrop Grumman. “Building on last year’s successful demonstration, we added five uncrewed systems in the air and two on the surface for this year’s Silent Swarm exercise and all of the systems worked collaboratively and autonomously to find target vessels.”

The concept of operations Northrop Grumman demonstrated included a USV equipped with the Scion EW payload, which collaborated with UAVs launched and controlled by Helix to find, fix, track and target vessels. Helix provided the autonomy engine for intelligent collaborative uncrewed systems and gave operators a near-real-time, multi-layered view of the mission landscape. Through this exercise, Scion enriched Helix’s ecosystem of uncrewed mission solutions.

Visit Here