News about Northrop Grumman

The U.S. Air Force awarded Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) production contracts to General Atomics (FQ-42 Vengeance) and Anduril (FQ-44 Fury), leaving Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin out of the hardware competition. Northrop still made the list of CCA software vendors, alongside Anduril, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, RTX and Shield AI. Using its own funds, Northrop built the YFQ-48A Talon Blue, a fixed-wing prototype based on a Scaled Composites aircraft, which made a fully autonomous first flight earlier this month running Northrop's Prism Mission Autonomy software. The drone is powered by a single Pratt & Whitney PW500 turbofan with a reported 700-mile range, and Northrop may enter it in the Increment 2 competition. If the Air Force does not buy it, the article notes the company would likely write off the cost as research and development.