Northrop’s Firebird Optionally Manned Aircraft Completes Multi-Day Capability Demo Flights

Northrop Grumman on Tuesday announced that its optionally piloted aircraft, the Firebird, recently completed a series of mission focused engagements, including integration and testing of Overwatch Imaging’s TK-9 Earthwatch sensor.

The sensor was integrated in one day as part of ongoing capability flights validating the range of missions the Firebird system can perform for government and commercial customers, the company said in a release.

Over a four day period, Firebird demonstrated several data collection missions, including wide-area surveillance, pattern of life monitoring, route clearance, search and rescue, high-value subject tracking, hostage recovery, and fire hotspot detection. The Firebird team carried out four 10+ hour manned flights.

Overwatch Imaging provides automated airborne imaging systems for piloted and unmanned aircraft. The TK-9 Earthwatch sensor has a flexible onboard AI-enabled automatic image processing engine that allows the system to adapt to new roles in new environments very quickly, from natural disaster emergency management to border security patrol and large-scale infrastructure inspection.

Firebird Optionally Piloted Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance System

Firebird is equipped with wide band Line-of-Sight (LoS) and/or Beyond-Line-of-Sight (BLoS) data links, onboard storage and accessible processing for rapid data exploitation to ensure timely completion of missions for industry and government customers. The system’s unique design allows sensors to be changed rapidly as plug-and-play devices, reducing first time payload integration time from months to days and enabling rapid field changes in less than an hour to increase operational availability and tailored mission suitability. The system delivers 30-plus hours of endurance and flies up to 25,000 feet, providing customers near real-time actionable intelligence.