Northrop Grumman has cleared the first unit under U.S. Customs Border and Protection's 14-aircraft P-3 Orion fleet to undergo depot-level maintenance activities in Lake Charles, Louisiana, over a 10-year period.

Northrop Grumman has demonstrated the thrust, internal insulation and other performance aspects of a new 63-inch-diameter strap-on booster designed to propel United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift rocket. The company said Thursday its Graphite Epoxy Motor 63XL, a new variant of the GEM 63 booster, generated almost 449,000 pounds of thrust during a 90-second validation ground test in Promontory, Utah.

The Department of Defense has given Northrop Grumman the green light to produce a software-defined anti-air and missile threat system following a Milestone C decision that required amounts of development and testing work between the company and the U.S. Army.

The Integrated Battle Command System that Northrop Grumman developed for the U.S. Army to help link warfighters and sensors across the battlefield has been cleared by the Department of Defense for low-rate initial production, Defense News reported Wednesday.

Northrop Grumman has secured a $325 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to continue its support of the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS). “The overall modification and sustainment work will ensure continuous safety and system readiness for the E-8C fleet against evolving threat environments,” said Janice Zilch, vice president of manned airborne surveillance programs at Northrop Grumman.

Northrop Grumman has been awarded a contract from Lockheed Martin to enable new functionality that supports the 5th Generation F-35 Lightning II multi-role fighter. BAE Systems is also part of the collaborative agreement. Northrop, Lockheed and BAE will equip the fighter jet with Northrop’s AN/ASQ-242 Integrated Communications, Navigation and Identification (ICNI) and BAE’s AN/ASQ-239 Electronic Warfare/Countermeasures (EW/CM) system to deliver optimal operational utility.

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to depart the International Space Station and host a two-week demonstration of the SharkSat payload once it leaves the ISS. SharkSat is intended to test and demonstrate multiprocessor systems, digital receivers, integrated circuits and other electronic components to facilitate the development of a Ka-band software defined radio that could have potential applications in 5G, space-to-ground and space-to-space communications.

NASA expects Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft to leave the International Space Station Jan. 6 following the delivery of almost 8K pounds of crew supplies, commercial technology and scientific experiments.

Northrop Grumman's aerospace systems business has secured a $37.7M contract to provide spare parts for RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft systems to the government of Japan.

Northrop Grumman has worked with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the Smithsonian Institution to transfer the operations control center of the orbiting Chandra space telescope to a facility in Burlington, Massachusetts, from its previous location near Harvard University's campus in Cambridge.

The U.S. Navy plans to issue a request for proposals in January to help field a next-generation lightweight torpedo concept as part of the service’s compact rapid attack weapon program, National Defense Magazine reported Wednesday.

Northrop Grumman's aerospace systems business has received a potential seven-year, $53.7M indefinite-delivery requirements contract to provide component repair services for the U.S. Air Force's high-altitude remotely piloted aircraft.

Northrop Grumman has been awarded a potential $250 million production contract by the U.S. Navy to deliver up to 103 GQM-163A “Coyote” supersonic sea-skimming target (SSST) vehicles. Northrop Grumman’s contract has a base value of $57 million that provides for 19 Coyote vehicles. “The Coyote is the only supersonic sea skimming target in production in the U.S.,” said Rich Straka, vice president of launch vehicles at Northrop Grumman.

Northrop Grumman has made an investment in Deepwave Digital and partnered with the company to advance research-and-development work on artificial intelligence to enhance communications processing capability.

Northrop Grumman has delivered a spacecraft bus to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in support of the Arachne program aimed at demonstrating power-beaming systems in low-Earth orbit by 2024.