Jane Edwards
Northrop Grumman will continue to evaluate its stand-in attack weapon missile offering using digital engineering capabilities under a three-month contract with the U.S. Air Force.
The company said Thursday its missile design for the SiAW program comes with open architecture to facilitate future upgrades and is expected to launch later in 2022.
Northrop, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris Technologies each secured three-month contracts from the Air Force to support the initial phase of the SiAW program that seeks to develop an air-to-ground weapon system that could be used by the F-35 fighter jet to counter hostile air defenses.
“We continue to advance our offering to stay ahead of threats and help ensure our mission-enabling capability will be technologically mature, tested and affordable,” said Mary Petryszyn, corporate vice president and president of defense systems business at Northrop and a 2022 Wash100 awardee.
Under the program’s Phase 1, the service plans to align the technical capabilities of its missile system with the Air Force Weapon Government Reference Architecture and requirements of Air Combat Command. Work under this phase includes the creation of a digital environment to build and test the initial SiAW increment using model-based systems engineering and digital engineering techniques.
Northrop said it will use its experience developing the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range, or AARGM-ER, as well as its integration, low-rate initial production and engineering and manufacturing development work on the F-35 aircraft to further develop its missile offering.
