Common Controller

Naval Air Systems Command recently made official its decision to award Northrop Grumman a single-source contract for a common controller for Global Hawk and the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles. Northrop is the primary contractor for Global Hawk.

In a March 11 Federal Business Opportunities notice, NAVSEA states it is awarding Northrop a 20-month contract worth nearly $25.6 million for the "Global Hawk and Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) common, autonomous airborne sense and avoid initial design efforts."

According to the purchase justification document appended to the notice:

The ABSAA system must be designed and developed as a subsystem for integration into the Global Hawk and BAMS UAVs. As the sole weapon system designer, developer, and integrator for both the BAMS and Global Hawk systems, only Northrop Grumman has the necessary technical information, tooling, facilities and personnel to successfully design a common system at the requisite TRL. Additionally, the BAMS UAS is still in the SDD phase and has not completed CDR. As such, the overall design configuration of the BAMS UAS is not stable enough to procure technical data. Therefore, it is not feasible to procure accurate technical data to provide a contractor other than Northrop Grumman to complete this ABSAA design task.

Inside the Navy reported last month that it may be some time before the Navy can create a common controller for unmanned vehicles that covers the aerial and underwater domains. Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the service's director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, at an industry conference on Feb. 3 described the UXV control station as a platform that would treat control programs for new vehicles like applications on an iPhone. Further:

Klunder said he expects the controller to take on systems like Fire Scout, as well as vehicles like the Medium-Range Unmanned Aerial System and Unmanned Carrier-Launched Aerial Surveillance System.

"Right now we are building into the requirements and the specifications to ensure that those control stations should be able to service all of those platforms," he said.

He acknowledged that legacy systems will likely need patches to become compatible with the controller.

However, he noted, "That domain exchange between undersea and air is tough. I don't want to oversell."

He said the Navy is working on creating a system that can bridge the gap between the domains, adding, "I don't want to tell you right today at this hour that I'm as confident on branching through that yet. We're striving for it."