Northrop Grumman [NOC] said on Sept. 2 that its Embedded Global Positioning System (GPS)/Inertial Navigation System (INS)-Modernization, EGI-M, has passed a critical design review (CDR).
The CDR marked the completion of detailed hardware and software design for EGI-M, the company said.
The launch platforms for EGI-M are the U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter by Lockheed Martin
[LMT] and the U.S. Navy E-2D Advanced Hawkeye early warning aircraft by Northrop Grumman.
“Additional fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms across Department of Defense and allied forces have already selected Northrop Grumman’s EGI-M as their future navigation solution,” Northrop Grumman said.
Brandon White, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of navigation and positioning systems, said in a statement that the completion of CDR “is a key step in bringing necessary navigation capability upgrades to our warfighters.”
“With its open architecture and government ownership of the key internal interfaces, EGI-M’s next generation navigation solution allows the government to quickly insert emerging capabilities from 3rd parties while maintaining cyber security and airworthiness,” he said.
EGI-M integrates new M-Code capable GPS receivers to resist jamming in anti-access environments and provides interoperability with civil controlled air space.
The Air Force last September awarded Northrop Grumman a $1.4 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for EGI-M follow-on production and sustainment (Defense Daily, Sept. 30, 2019). Northrop Grumman in February last year won a $59 million contract for the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the program.
Northrop Grumman has said that EGI-M will fit on the vast majority of airborne military platforms, including larger drones, and that the company can also sell a smaller version by removing the inertial system for smaller drones (Defense Daily, May 6, 2019).
EGI-M has two advanced processors and an open architecture so that EGI-M becomes a fusion center that accepts data from satellites, Doppler radar, electro-optical/infrared cameras, terrain-aimed targeting pods, and other systems to provide military forces a position, navigation, and timing solution in GPS-denied environments.
Northrop Grumman said that it has been on contract for EMD since November 2018.