Northrop demonstrates OMS architecture

Northrop Grumman has demonstrated that the US Air Force's Open Mission Systems (OMS) architecture standards can be integrated across various platforms and systems, including UAS, the company announced on 20 July.

Multiple flight tests demonstrated the capabilities of the OMS at Edwards air force base in June. OMS-compliant architecture was used to integrate subsystems onto the B-2 Sprit stealth bomber and the NASA Global Hawk UAS.

The most recent demonstration involved the B-2, Northrop Grumman's OMS-compliant Gulfstream G550 test bed aircraft as an ISR asset and an OMS-compliant battle management command and control (BMC2) ground node. The G550 aircraft detected a ground threat and broadcast the location of the threat to the BMC2 node across a line-of-sight Link-16 data link. The node assigned the B-2 to engage the target, and the aircraft used its auto-routing function to re-plan its mission.

The company demonstrated that OMS-compliant architectures can be used on legacy platforms and enable the integration of an on-board mission planning auto-router and other mission capabilities.

Col. Rob Strasser, B-2 system program manager, US Air Force, said: 'The team's ability to rapidly demonstrate OMS has been nothing short of amazing and shows the speed at which capabilities can be developed when the air force and industry partner together.

'The collaboration and innovation required by the team to rapidly plan, integrate and demonstrate OMS on the B-2 has illustrated the ability to reduce cost while significantly increasing mission effectiveness.'

Tom Vice, corporate vice president and president, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, said: 'Northrop Grumman is committed to OMS and modular open architectures. OMS provides us the ability to rapidly incorporate new innovative, affordable and adaptable capability into our products.

'Our recent OMS demonstrations on the Global Hawk UAS and the B-2 long-range strike bomber have proved to be very successful.'

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