Northrop Grumman, SAN DIEGO: Northrop Grumman Corporation has begun acceptance testing the first of four new workstations that will allow it to reduce the time and cost to develop operational flight software for the Department of Defense's Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program.
The testing, which began in mid December, marks the beginning of operations for a systems integration laboratory the company opened in October at its San Diego facility to support work on its X-47B J-UCAS program. The company expects to install the remaining three workstations in the facility by March 2005.
These new workstations include an X-47B vehicle management computer (VMC), a six-degree of freedom simulation, and all of the input/output and test equipment needed to produce flight-ready software. Smiths Aerospace of Grand Rapids, Mich. produced the VMCs.
