AWACS without a plane? Northrop pitches new connect-everything product

Time was, the U.S. military needed a giant AWACS aircraft packed with people, sensors, and computers to handle sensing and data sharing. Northrop Grumman now says it has a way to do much of that far from the vulnerable skies.

NG InSight is a new “toolbox” of connected technologies, physical processors, and high-band communications apertures as well as software-defined signals intelligence, cyber effects, and communications, the company announced at the Air Force Association’s Air Space Cyber conference at National Harbor on Monday. It enables the user to connect multiple sensors, providing AWACS-like sensor capabilities across domains.

Big improvements in off-platform computing, coupled with improvements in commercial space communications, means that those digital capabilities don’t have to reside on a single plane or platform anymore, said Jenna Paukstis, Northrop’s vice president and general manager in the networked information solutions division.

“We can leverage off-board processing sensors, cloud infrastructures, which then help us reduce size, weight and power, and that then frees up space for other capabilities. Could be fuel, weapons, other payloads,” Paukstis said. That, in turn, “helps ensure that our platforms can remain undetected longer by having lower power requirements, also drives affordability, all of which then increase…lethality and survivability.”

She said that the company has already done some flight demonstrations and more are scheduled for later in the year. A key theme that has emerged in those tests: using commercial satellite communications from companies like SpaceX and One Web and Iridium to allow data delivery and collection to continue in places where an adversary is employing electronic warfare or other effects. 

“One recent demonstration was specific to the Global Lightning program, where we successfully completed our first over-the-air demonstration of a hybrid satellite communications solution, providing seamless connection with commercial space internet providers.” Paukstis told Defense One in an email before her appearance. “The demonstration validated resilient, uninterrupted connectivity while rapidly switching between constellations and orbits.”

NG InSight’s users could include a commander at a headquarters or an operator closer to combat, depending on what the mission is and what the electromagnetic environment is like, she said. 

The announcement comes as the Air Force is trying to grapple with the prospect of a future air warfare environment far more challenging than any it has ever seen before, and trying to distribute more effects across more people and platforms, Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain, the Air Force’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, said in a different session.

“You will be under an attack constantly, kinetically and non-kinetically. You'll be disconnected from your higher headquarters, probably at a more routine basis than we have currently seen, and you'll have to deal with that circumstance,” Spain said. 

Paukstis said that NG InSIght is intended to help in that sort of environment to “increase survivability, targeting, lethality and security.”