Last month, Northrop Grumman [NOC] flight tested a prototype of the company’s LN-351 modernized Global Positioning System (GPS) military code (M-code) capable receiver, Northrop Grumman said on June 27th.
The flight came aboard a Textron [TXT] Cessna Citation 560 testbed aircraft under the DoD Embedded GPS/Inertial Navigation System Modernization (EGI-M) program.
“It is the first time that EGI-M, equipped with an M-code capable receiver, has been tested in flight,” Northrop Grumman said.
Ryan Arrington, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of navigation and cockpit systems, said in a company statement that the flight test “is a major step forward in developing our next generation airborne navigation system” and that EGI-M will enable U.S. military forces “to navigate accurately and precisely through hostile and contested environments.”
Flight test data from the LN-351 prototype indicated that the receiver “performed at standards equal to its current LN-251 INS/GPS system, featuring modern fiber optic gyro technology,” Northrop Grumman said.
Patrick Young, Northrop Grumman’s director of advanced navigator programs, said that the “flight test validated our software capabilities with new hardware” and that “more ground-level dynamic testing is in the future.”
“Building on our results, we’re focusing on more mission-specific capabilities,” Young said of the company’s next step for EGI-M.
Under EGI-M Honeywell [HON] and Northrop Grumman are replacing old GPS receivers with GPS M-code capable receivers on Air Force and Navy platforms (Defense Daily, June 8).
“According to documentation from DoD, both [EGI-M] contractors have experienced significant delays and cost overruns, including breaches of key schedule milestones by as much as 15 months,” GAO said in a report this month. “According to an Air Force program official, over the course of fiscal year 2022, it became clear that neither contractor would be able to meet its revised schedule baseline. The Air Force is currently working with the contractors to prepare a new schedule. Though the schedule is still under development, Air Force officials stated they cannot deliver EGI-M to support initial fielding before fiscal year 2025.”
GAO said in the report that current positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) receivers “are not designed to easily add in new sources of PNT information” and that such PNT receivers “are a challenge to fielding new capabilities, as these systems cannot be upgraded affordably.”
To avoid significant upgrade costs, the Air Force has been developing an open-systems GPS M-code Resilient Embedded GPS/Inertial Navigation System (R-EGI) receiver by Huntsville, Ala.-based Integrated Solutions for Systems, Inc. for use on Air Force F-16s and possibly F-15Es and F-15EXs.
The R-EGI, however, apparently does not meet the size and power requirements for U.S. Navy platforms, GAO said.
Northrop Grumman said that critical design review for EGI-M ended in 2020 and that the first aircraft slated to receive the company’s LN-351 are the Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye by Northrop Grumman and the Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter by Lockheed Martin [LMT].
“Additional fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms across Department of Defense and allied forces have selected Northrop Grumman’s EGI-M as their future navigation solution to support mission-critical systems,” Northrop Grumman said on June 27th.
Since the late 1990s, the Pentagon has been developing GPS M-code to have a stronger signal and more advanced encryption, but initial operational capability may be years away.
GAO said last August that the cost to move to M-code “will likely be billions of dollars greater than the $2.5 billion identified through fiscal year 2021, because significant work remains” (Defense Daily, Aug. 17, 2022).
Some Navy EGI receivers are to reach the end of their service lives in 2025 when “the receivers and the cards that support them are no longer in production,” according to the new GAO report. “As a result, the Navy faces a potential capability gap starting in 2025….If the legacy receiver’s end-of-life occurs beginning in 2025, as expected, and EGI-M is not yet available for integration, Navy officials told us they might have to ground select aircraft.”