Northrop Grumman Set To Fly Autonomy Testbed

Northrop Grumman’s new testbed with its company-developed autonomy software is set to fly imminently, as the company looks to use the aircraft to help partner companies develop their own software.

The company will fly the Scaled Composites Model 437 as part of the Beacon autonomy program, which will also demonstrate another purpose to potential customers: Northrop Grumman is ready to build an open-architecture-focused autonomous aircraft that can fly multiple autonomous systems. This as the U.S. Air Force is looking at requirements for future increments of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and the Navy is in its own early stages.

“The market is very hungry for autonomous testbeds,” says Dan Salluce, the company’s director of advanced autonomy. “A lot of companies are innovators in the AI [artificial intelligence] and autonomy space, but they’re not yet hardware vendors. And so the combination of what we provide allows us to scratch that itch, perhaps a little bit, in the testbed, to provide a means to get to the higher technology readiness, but ultimately [to substantiate] Northrop Grumman’s capability as a system integrator.”

In July, Northrop Grumman announced its first round of partners that will fly on Beacon: Applied Intuition, Autonodyne, Merlin, Red 6, Shield AI and SoarTech.

The company has said the initial flight of Beacon will happen this summer, and Salluce said it is “imminent.” Beacon will fly with a safety pilot on board, who can switch the aircraft to autonomous flight to test software.

Northrop Grumman’s internally developed autonomy software, known as PRISM, will handle the basics of flight, Salluce says. Having PRISM handle safety of flight allows the other software systems to focus on mission-specific tasks. Beacon will have its interfaces and sensors open to allow the software agents to wring out their capabilities, he says.

“What Beacon allows us to do is take AI and autonomy and integrate it on our platform where we, Northrop Grumman, expose all of our bona fide capability in flight autonomy and turn that loose to the latest companies and innovators to show us what they can do,” he says.

Beacon will join other software testbeds, such as the U.S. Air Force’s X-62A at Edwards AFB, California, and the Project Venom F-16s at Eglin AFB, Florida. Salluce says Beacon will serve as another option, though this aircraft operates more like a business jet than a combat aircraft. It is designed to fly more often at a much lower price point, with the company bringing on its own ground equipment, communications and telemetry for tests.