Category Archives: Northrop Grumman

Army, Northrop Grumman, Sensors, weapons systems

Northrop Grumman, SELEX GALILEO Team up again on IR countermeasures for U.S. Army Program

Announcing another strategic alliance with a European defense company, today Northrop Grumman Corporation revealed it had teamed with  SELEX Galileo, a Finmeccanica company, to compete for the U.S. Army’s Common Infrared Countermeasures (CIRCM) program.

SELEX Galileo, as noted in B&B recently, is assisting the Pakistani government in its development of its own UAV capability.

CIRCM is a US Army program to provide light and medium helicopters with a laser-based defense against infrared-seeking antiaircraft missiles and other IR “current and future IR threat systems.”  Northrop/SELEX Galileo’s proposed system for CIRCM program, uses the ECLIPSE micro pointer/tracker, a  relatively low-cost compact lightweight stabilized laser transmitter, designed for an earlier Northrop Grumman directed CIRCM system, NEMESIS, integrating it into a new”4th generation lightweight, highly reliable Directional Infrared Countermeasures (DIRCM) system specifically designed for medium and light helicopter protection.” (from Northrop’s release).

via Northrop Grumman and SELEX GALILEO Team to Compete for U.S. Army’s Common Infrared Countermeasures Program (NYSE:NOC).

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Northrop Grumman, Space

Northrop Grumman NPOESS Satellite enters final phase of development

Northrop Grumman reports it has completed the engineering testbed prototype of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environment Satellite System (NPOESS), which will give civilian and defense users extremely accurate data on weather conditions as orbits the Earth once every 100 minutes.  NPOESS data will aid mission planners in forecasting conditions in an operation area to take maximum advantage of the weather.

NG says that they’ve reached the Electrical Engineering Model Test Bed milestone early. “This test bed marks NPOESS’ transition to the final phase of spacecraft development,” said Dave Vandervoet, vice president and NPOESS program manager for Northrop Grumman’s Aerospace Systems sector. “We completed the EEMTB early, ahead of spacecraft integration and test, giving us ample opportunity to find and fix problems to ensure successful satellite integration and test. The spacecraft is now at a higher level of maturity for integration and test than is typical at this stage.”

See the release at: Northrop Grumman-Built NPOESS Satellite Achieves Milestone for Early Spacecraft Testing (NYSE:NOC).

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