Jane Edwards
Northrop Grumman has demonstrated its navigation platform designed to guide military aircraft and aerial weapon systems to maritime and ground targets without using GPS signals.
The company said Monday it teamed up with the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research to test the capability of its All Source Adaptive Fusion software in flight demonstrations.
ASAF uses hardware and high-speed algorithms that work to generate navigational insights from data collected from electro-optical/infrared platforms, radar, magnetometer and other sources.
An unmanned aircraft equipped with ASAF software that was configured in fixed navigation mode traveled to its specific location through the use of inputs from a geo-registration software and sensor package during a flight demo conducted at Woomera Test Range in South Australia.
In another flight demo, a Bell 407 helicopter followed the U.S. Naval Academy’s YP-700 vessel through the use of mobile mode configured-ASAF software that works to produce estimates of the aircraft’s position, velocity and attitude using data from an infrared sensor.
Scott Stapp, vice president of applied technology at Northrop’s aerospace systems business, said the demonstrations seek to reflect ASAF’s technical maturity to operate in GPS-denied environments.
Stapp noted that ASAF software will work to support cargo delivery, targeting and strike, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
