The Navy’s new unmanned aerial drone cleared a critical development milestone last month, paving the way for program officials to begin intensive testing of the aircraft, according to service and industry officials.
The week-long Critical Design Review for the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial vehicle evaluated a number of primary system and subsystem designs for the Northrop Grumman [NOC]-built aircraft, according to a company statement released yesterday.
A marinized version of Northrop Grumman’s MQ-1B Global Hawk UAS developed for the Air Force, the MQ-4C BAMS will be able to launch from Navy warships at sea and perform medium to high-altitude surveillance operations.
Representatives from the Naval Air Systems Command, Defense Department, the Air Force, the Navy staff as well as officials from the service’s numbered fleets all participated in the “technical review board’ for the BAMS CDR, according to the statement.
While program officials are “working to close out action items” identified during the CDR, the review itself provided participants “with a comprehensive understanding of the program’s risks as the MQ-4C progresses to its next major milestone,” the statement added.
The actual CDR was preceded by 10 subsystem and segment CDRs, which set the initial product baseline for the Navy system and was the subject of the CDR milestone evaluation.
That next milestone, the test readiness review, is slated to begin this fall with the first two unfinished BAMS fuselages set for delivery to the company’s facility in Palmdale, Calif., for final assembly, Steve Enewold, Northrop Grumman vice president and program manager for BAMS, said in the statement.
The fall test readiness review and the Palmdale deliveries put the program on track for its first live flight sometime next year, Enewold said.
“The entire team has done a very thorough and exhaustive job in detail design,” Capt. Bob Dishman, the Navy’s BAMS UAS program manager, said in the same statement. “Now the program will shift its attention to integration and test with the same level of rigor to ensure we deliver an operationally effective and suitable capability on time and on budget.”