[SatNews] The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) a $3.3 million contract to participate in the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Control Segment (UCS) Architecture Working Group (UCSWG).

Sponsored by the Unmanned Warfare Office of the Office Secretary of Defense (OSD), the UCSWG will provide increased UAS command and control capability to the warfighter at lower cost by using an open system architecture approach across the UAS enterprise. The UCSWG is an open technical standards committee consisting of industry and government representatives from each UAS program of record, several emerging UAS programs and small businesses. The objective of the UCSWG effort is to define a common UAS control station architecture based on standard data models and service interface definitions to enable interoperability, scalability and adaptability of UAS ground stations. The CMMS program provides the business and technical governance for Northrop Grumman's UAS mission management and control systems capabilities, and works closely with the UCSWG to ensure the evolving UCS architecture meets UAS customer requirements for the U.S. Navy's MQ-4C Broad Area Maritime Surveillance UAS and MQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical UAS programs.

Northrop Grumman's leadership in secure, open system architectures development is aligned with initiatives by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (OUSD AT&L) to obtain greater efficiency in defense spending for warfighting systems and increase the buying power of the DOD acquisition community. Ultimately for the warfighter, the UCS open architecture approach provides a path for near-term incremental capability improvements and addresses OSD's long range UAS goals to improve the efficiency, interoperability and scalability needs of the growing UAS force capability.