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Aurora delivers BAMS composite structures

4th January 2012 - 11:56 GMT | by Shephard News Team

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Aurora Flight Sciences has announced that it has delivered the first complete ship set of composite aerospace structures to Northrop Grumman for the MQ-4C Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS UAS) programme being carried out for the US Navy. The delivery marks a major step in the programme, with the first flight of the first aircraft expected to take place during 2012.

Aurora is contracted to deliver the aft fuselage, forward nacelle, mid nacelle, aft nacelle, and V-tail assemblies of the MQ-4C BAMS UAS aircraft. The structures will be shipped to Northrop Grumman for final assembly in Palmdale, California.

The MQ-4C BAMS UAS is the naval version of the US Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk aircraft. The aircraft will be used in a similar capacity by the Navy, primarily to execute intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks, and provide a persistent assessment of surface threats covering vast areas of open ocean and littoral regions to military commanders.

Aurora has worked with Northrop Grumman on Global hawk since 1995, working on all of the aircraft’s composite components except the wing and radomes.

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