Northrop Grumman wins DARPA TERN programme

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Northrop Grumman will demonstrate that an MQ-9 Reaper-sized unmanned air vehicle (UAV) can operate at sea from ships smaller than an aircraft carrier under a $93 million contract awarded on 24 December.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) eliminated AeroVironment last September as Northrop’s only remaining competitor for the Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (TERN) programme. But Northrop’s role in designing, developing and demonstrating the medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV was not confirmed until DARPA announced the contract award.

The terms of the contract require Northrop to contribute $39 million, raising the overall cost of the demonstration programme to $132 million.

On 11 December, Northrop revealed a model of the company’s secretive design to a handful of journalists touring the company’s El Segundo, California, research and manufacturing facilities. The model showed Northrop had selected a flying-wing tailsitter design with a nose-mounted counter-rotating propeller system.

The 12.2m (40ft)-span vehicle appeared reminiscent of the tail-sitting Lockheed XFV-1 and Convair XFY-1 Pogo fighters research projects of the 1950s. But Northrop’s TERN differed in design with the absence of a fuselage and a much larger set of counter-rotating propellers that measured as much as one-third of the wingspan.

The model also showed that Northrop envisioned mounting weapons and other stores externally on hard points under the wing.

DARPA launched the TERN programme to solve a capability problem for the US Navy. The service regularly operates small, tactical unmanned air systems, such as the Boeing/Insitu Integrator from frigate-class ships, using a catapult to launch the aircraft and a crane to recover it. But carrying payloads larger than about 30kg required using an unmanned helicopter, such as the Northrop MQ-8C Fire Scout, which can carry heavier loads but lacks the range and endurance of a General Atomics Aeronautics Systems MQ-9.

The TERN attempts to bridge that gap with a vehicle that can carry a 272kg payload on missions up to 900nm (1,670km).

The Phase III contract awarded to Northrop on 24 December requires the company to build a demonstrator, perform ground testing and demonstrate the aircraft at sea.

Northrop Grumman wins DARPA TERN programme

 

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WASHINGTON — The Convair XFY-1 Pogo of the 1950s is one of those famous aviation “funnies” – a weird, experimental aircraft intended to take off and land vertically. The “tailsitter” aircraft might have been the prototype for a new class of fighter that could take off and land from almost any ship with a flat deck.

While there were many technical hurdles, there was one problem that never quite found a solution – while a pilot could strap in and take off straight up, his ability to make a vertical, over-the-shoulder landing was a whole lot harder. The project was dropped in 1956.

But the advent of unmanned aerial vehicles means only the machine, not the pilot, has to look backwards to land, and a new project is in development to field an aircraft that could fly from warships with a small flight deck.

Known as TERN, for Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node, the project is a joint program between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research. Northrop Grumman was recently chosen to build a full-scale demonstrator system of the medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial system (UAS).

“The design we have in mind for the TERN demonstrator could greatly increase the effectiveness of any host ship by augmenting awareness, reach and connectivity,” Dan Prat, DARPA program manager, said in a Dec. 28 press release.

“We continue to make progress toward our goal to develop breakthrough technologies that would enable persistent ISR and strike capabilities almost anywhere in the world at a fraction of current deployment costs, time and effort,” he added.

Northrop beat out AeroVironment for the Phase 3 portion of the TERN program and was awarded a $93 million contract on Dec. 24. Northrop reportedly will also contribute $39 million to the effort.

The Northrop TERN model, first shown on Dec. 11, is a flying-wing tailsitter design with a four-point landing wheel configuration, powered by twin, counter-rotating propellers on its nose. The aircraft will take off and land vertically, transitioning to horizontal flight to carry out its mission.

DARPA, in its Dec. 28 release, acknowledged the TERN demonstrator will “bear some resemblance” to the XFY-1 Pogo.

“Moving to an unmanned platform, refocusing the mission and incorporating modern precision relative navigation and other technologies removes many of the challenges the XFY-1 and other prior efforts faced in developing aircraft based from small ships,” Patt said in the DARPA release.

The system produced under the Phase 3 effort, DARPA said, will be able “to use forward-deployed small ships as mobile launch and recovery sites. Initial ground-based testing, if successful, would lead to an at-sea demonstration of takeoff, transition to and from horizontal flight, and landing -- all from a test platform with a deck size similar to that of a destroyer or other small surface-combat vessel.”

DARPA and the Navy, under a June 2014 memorandum of agreement, are sharing responsibility for the development and testing of the TERN demonstrator system. The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, DARPA added, has also expressed interest in the program.

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