ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy announced on Dec. 9 a new warrant officer specialty designator whose job will be to operate carrier-based MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aerial vehicles, which are expected to start appearing in fleet carrier air wings sometime in 2024. 

The establishment of the Aerial Vehicle Operator (AVO) warrant officer specialty became a reality in October with Secretary of the Navy Kenneth J. Braithwaite’s approval of the new designator, which was announced in NAVADMIN 315/20. 

Over the next six to 10 years, the Navy will recruit, train and send to the fleet, a community of roughly 450 warrants in grades W-1 through W-5. 

Those selected for the program will first complete Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. Upon graduation, they will be designated as Warrant Officer One and must complete basic flight training as well as advanced training on the MQ-25 aerial vehicle. Once complete with basic flight training, these officers will earn their own distinctive Navy “wings of gold” warfare device and be assigned the 737X designator. 

“AVO’s will start out operating the MQ-25 Stingray, the Navy’s first carrier based unmanned aerial vehicle, which is expected to join the fleet with an initial operating capability in 2024,” said Capt. Christopher Wood, aviation officer community manager at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Millington, Tennessee.   

The use of warrant officers as the primary operators of unmanned aerial vehicles came about because the expected career path they’ll have as they move up the ranks will be as technical specialists who complete repetitive tours, which fits the Navy’s model on how warrant grades are utilized. 

“Unlike traditional Navy Chief Warrant Officers, the majority of these officers will be accessed much younger and trained along the lines of current Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers in the unrestricted designators,” Wood said. 

“However, Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers require assignments that progress in tactical and leadership scope to be competitive for promotion, while warrant officer AVO’s will be technical specialists and spend their careers as operators.” 

Navy Recruiting Command will begin accepting applications for initial AVO accessions in fiscal year 2022. In addition to street-to-fleet warrants, enlisted Sailors will also be able to apply for the program, and potentially earn the 737X warrant officer designator. 

“Currently, the plan is to grow the community from the ground up with Warrant Officer AVOs,” Wood said. “However, Naval Aviation will continue to evaluate the requirements of the program as it matures.” 

Commanding and executive officers, as well as department heads of MQ-25 squadrons, will be filled by aviators and flight officers administratively screened for those commands. 

“During the first four to five years of the program, some MQ-25 AVOs will come from other Type/Model/Series as we build up the knowledge base, with the first 3-4 deployments having a mix of existing unrestricted line and new warrants making up the ready room.” 

And though right now the community will be focused on the MQ-25, in the future, warrant officer AVOs may also operate the MQ-4C Triton while on shore duty following their initial MQ-25 sea tour. As the Navy’s footprint in unmanned aerial vehicles increases, so could the scope of the AVO community.   

ARLINGTON, Va. — Northrop Grumman plans to compete in the Navy’s Very Light-Weight Torpedo Program next year, company officials said.  

Dave Allan, the company’s director of Strategic Growth for Undersea Systems, told Seapower in a Dec. 8 teleconference the company expects the Navy to issue in January 2021 a Request for Proposals for the taking the non-production-designed VLWT prototype — designed by Penn State Applied Physics Lab (APL) — into a production design. and develop it over three years as an All-Up Round it to be suitable for manufacturing. Other Transactional Authority will be used to deploy the torpedo to the fleet.    

Allan said the company would be bidding to develop for production the Compact Rapid Attack Weapon (CRAW), the offensive version of the Counter Anti-torpedo Torpedo (CAT), a defensive weapon developed by Penn State APL for use by aircraft carriers to defeat incoming submarine-launched anti-ship torpedoes. Five aircraft carriers were fitted with CAT launchers. 

The hardware-enabled, software-defined VLWT would be equipped with advanced electronics and processing power, with the software enabling the same weapon to serve in an offensive or defensive role. 

The nine-foot-long VWLT is one third of the size of the Mk54 — the Navy’s most advanced light-weight torpedo — and weighs just over 200 pounds, compared with the 608-pound Mk54. With this weight advantage, a platform can carry more torpedoes or carry the same number at longer ranges and give the platform more endurance. The VLWT could be carried by surface, airborne, and undersea platforms, manned and unmanned.   

David Portner, Northrop Grumman’s program manager for Undersea Weapons, said the VLWT could be carried by such anti-submarine aircraft as P-8A maritime patrol aircraft, MH-60R helicopters and MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicles.  

During an Advanced Naval Technology Exercise two years ago, Northrop Grumman demonstrated the deployment of a VLWT from a surrogate helicopter simulating a Fire Scout. 

The torpedo is fitted with a parachute to reduce the shock of impact with the water. The VLWT also could be fitted with a glide wing kit similar to the one on Boeing’s HAAWC (High-Altitude Anti-submarine Weapon Concept), which is in development to extend the launch range and altitude as well as precision guidance for the Mk54 torpedo.   

The VLWT also could be deployed from a vessel such as a littoral combat ship by way of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Fortner said a USV could carry VLWTs away from the ship and put them close to the target. 

Portner said the Navy already has demonstrated that the legacy Surface Vessel Torpedo Tubes that fire Mk46 and Mk54 light-weight torpedoes could be fitted with internal sleeves to accommodate the smaller-diameter VLWT, but a new launcher could be developed to house a larger number of VLWTs. 

He said one or more VLWTs could be fitted to an ASROC (Anti-Submarine Rocket) in place of a MK54 torpedo if the Navy decided to do proceed with that. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Defense Department will start a COVID-19 vaccination pilot program at 16 facilities in the United States and overseas, as soon as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants emergency authorization, which is expected in the next few days, Pentagon officials said Dec 9.

 Vaccination, which will be voluntary as long as the department is operating under an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA, could start distributing almost 44,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, the military’s expected share of a limited initial production, “as early as next week for immediate use,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Thomas McCaffery told reporters at a live-streamed Pentagon briefing.

The phase-in of other prioritized personnel at additional locations will continue until 60% of Defense Department personnel, about 11 million, have received the vaccine. By then, the department assumes vaccine production will have ramped up enough to permit unrestricted vaccination rates.

The first phase of voluntary vaccinations will target the coronavirus pandemic’s first responders: Healthcare providers and support staff, emergency services, and public safety personnel at Military Treatment Facilities.  At first, only a very small percentage of those first vaccinations will go to critical national capabilities forces, such as the long range bombers, ballistic missile submarines and land-based missiles that make up the nuclear deterrence triad, officials said. In the meantime, mandatory counter-COVID-19 procedures such as wearing a face-covering, social distancing and quarantining before and after deployments will remain in force, they added.

The 16 vaccination sites were picked because they had extra cold storage capability for the temperature-sensitive vaccines, sizeable local populations to vaccinate and large medical staffs, including an on-site immunization health specialist, said Director of the Defense Health Agency Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Place.

The 13 vaccination sites in the continental United States include several Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard facilities: Navy Branch Health Clinic at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, and the Naval Hospital Pensacola, both in Florida; the Alameda Health Services clinic at the Coast Guard Base  Alameda, the Naval Medical Center at San Diego, the Naval Hospital at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, all in California; Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland and the U.S. Coast Guard Base Clinic, Portsmouth, Virginia.

The Pentagon announcement came eight days after a Navy reservist assigned to Navy Operational Support Center Akron, Ohio, died at a local hospital in Canton, Ohio from apparent complications associated with the coronavirus.

Builder 2ns Class Nathan Huff Bishop, 33, a Seabee, was only the second Sailor to succumb to COVID-19 despite widespread spikes in infection and death rates across the country. The first was Chief Petty Officer Robert Thacker Jr., 41, assigned to USS Theodore Roosevelt, the first Navy vessel to suffer a COVID-19 outbreak at sea. He died in April at the U.S. Naval Hospital on Guam. As of Dec. 2, a total of 17,035 uniformed Navy personnel have tested positive for COVID-19 in 2020, 14,217 have recovered, nine remain hospitalized and two have died.

BETHESDA, Md. — Sailors will soon spend more time focused on the mission and less on aircraft and ship repairs with a new information system driven by artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, Lockheed Martin said in a Dec. 9 release. 

Digitally re-engineering more than 20 standalone applications into one integrated system, this new tool enables Sailors and Marine Corps maintainers, to anticipate and resolve potential maintenance issues or part failures on aircraft, ships and other systems. 

The U.S. Navy is digitally transforming its legacy maintenance systems with a fully modernized, responsive logistics information systems solution developed by Lockheed Martin. 

Lockheed Martin partnered with the Navy to rapidly develop and test the integrated logistics information systems solution, emphasizing simplified user interfaces, streamlined workflows, and time-saving features such as auto-population and smart searching. 

“Lockheed Martin’s solution is both intuitive and streamlined to maximize end user efficiency,” said Capt. Allan Walters, former program manager of the Navy’s Command and Control Systems Program Office. “The ability to execute rapid and flexible changes to the software is impressive and designed to improve Navy readiness both ashore and afloat through reduced failure rates and improved repair times.” 

The solution’s advanced software capabilities use the latest Department of Defense-approved DevSecOps tools, so software updates can happen in days or weeks instead of months and years, enabling the Navy’s vision of “Compile to Combat in 24 Hours.” 

Navy maintainers can create, view and complete maintenance work orders from a mobile device. Instead of referencing a paper or digital manual, sailors can view 3-D models of objects and see where they’re located in the context of an entire ship or aircraft. 

“Our logistics solution provides a digital twin capability, integrating 3-D model visualization with material data, maintenance history and the entire operational environment,” said Reeves Valentine, vice president of Lockheed Martin Enterprise Sustainment Solutions. “Sailors can simulate a maintenance action and see its results before doing it on the real thing. Having this capability will result in a greater ability to predict part failure, resulting in optimized maintenance actions to improve asset readiness.” 

Smart searching and auto-population functionality help identify proper parts and common issues when creating work orders, which eliminates work and reducing errors. 

Lockheed Martin partnered with non-traditional vendors IFS – an enterprise software developer – and Beast Code, a Florida software start-up, to create the logistics information systems solution, which will be initially fielded at 10 Navy sites with about 10,000 users. The delivered solution is part of the U.S. Navy Naval Operational Business Logistics Enterprise (NOBLE) family of systems providing enhanced situational awareness, planning, execution, and management of maintenance and supply logistics and business functions for more than 200,000 sailors. 

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — The Coast Guard lit a first-of-its-kind, LED-based rotating beacon at Oak Island Lighthouse on Caswell Beach, N.C., Dec. 7, the Coast Guard 5th District said in a Dec. 8 release. 

This upgrade is the Coast Guard’s first LED-based rotating beacon for an active aid to navigation and will provide a permanent, cost-effective, and energy-efficient solution for the lighthouse. Necessary renovations of the lighthouse to prepare for the new beacon began in October. 

“Lighthouses have navigational and historic significance here in North Carolina,” said Lt. Brittany Akers, chief of waterways management at Coast Guard Sector North Carolina. “The Oak Island Lighthouse is especially notable as it marks the entrance to the Cape Fear River. The modernization of the light will ensure its continued reliable service to the mariner in a cost-effective way that respects the historical significance of the lighthouse.” 

The Oak Island Lighthouse was completed in 1958 on property that has been in use as a Coast Guard station since the 1930s. In 2004, the lighthouse was deeded to the Town of Caswell Beach, which maintains the property. However, the Coast Guard continues upkeep of lighthouse since serves as an active aid to navigation for the Frying Pan Shoal area. 

The lighthouse is currently not open for public tours due to COVID-19 mitigation measures. 

The Warfare Innovation Continuum (WIC) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California, conducts an annual workshop to better understand a major issue that will be the subject of study for the year to follow.

In 2020, the school examined “Resurrecting War Plan Blue,” which refers to an examination conducted by the War Department between the first and second world wars about the nation’s ability to support and sustain a major conflict. 

The September 2020 Workshop, the 13^th in the series, tasked participants to consider a conflict scenario in the year 2035 requiring the U.S. to quickly mobilize forces and assets in response to a rapidly deteriorating global security environment.

The three-and-a-half-day experience allowed NPS students focused interaction with faculty, staff, fleet officers, and guest engineers from Navy labs, system commands and industry. The workshop tasked participants to apply emerging technologies to shape the way we fight in a 2035 global conflict. Concept generation teams were given a design challenge: How might emerging technologies and concepts and joint, combined and coalition forces contribute to enhancing the resiliency of naval forces, logistics, and support facilities in an extended campaign against a peer adversary?

The intent was to explore technologies and policies to undertake now to increase the nation’s resiliency for an extended conflict.

The 2020 WIC workshop included 157 registered participants in the roles of concept generation team members, facilitators, panelists, mentors and observers. The full participant pool included representatives from 72 different organizations, most participating virtually. Half of the workshop participants were NPS students drawn from all naval warfare domains, as well as from the full range of armed services on campus.

Prof. Jeff Kline, Director of the Naval Warfare Studies Institute and Professor of Practice in Operations Research, said the proposed topics each year were narrowed down by employing selection criteria.

“Is the concept feasible, either physically or fiscally; is the concept unique; does the concept solve a key problem or fill a key gap; and is the concept testable?” he asked.

The issues examined for War Plan Blue are relevant today, Kline said. “We want to investigate our vulnerabilities in mobilization and industrialization, and potentially in our ability to operate forward with our infrastructure as it currently exists.” 

“Our junior officers are focused on their course of study at NPS, and early career engineers at the labs or with industry are focused on their particular project work … mixing them together in this way to work within these problem spaces is a really rich environment to not only explore what’s in the realm of the possible, but understand what that exploration can be.

“We want our own students to have an appreciation for operational challenges that are going to be emerging over the next 10 years, and [we are] teaching them how to do critical thinking to find solutions for them.”

Trending topics

In addition to supplying topics for further NPS research, past WIC Workshops have informed senior leadership and provided information and concept ideas to Naval Warfare Development Command (NWDC) and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL). The September 2017 workshop tasked participants to apply emerging “Distributed Maritime Operations” technologies within a near-future conflict in an urban littoral environment, and the 2018 “Cross Domain Operations” workshop looked at integration of assets. The September 2019 workshop “Logistics in Contested Environments” asked teams to focus on how to maintain forces in a sustained conflict.

Kline said the workshop brings together a mix of faculty and students with the field, fleet, academia and industry. 

“We examine the issues, and take the best ideas to inspire research and prototyping for the whole academic year. By taking on these topics suggested by senior leadership, and by socializing the results with our stakeholders, we are maintaining NPS as a thought leader, both in emerging technologies and developing concepts,” Kline said.

“Our officer students bring the tactical operational experience of this environment, and they walk away with a broadened experience in order to be able to tackle the unknown in the future,” Kline said.  “We also hope to build informal networks among the junior engineers of the nation and the operating naval officers here at NPS and those that participate, so that they start to maintain contact across both industry and the services to know how to find some of these solutions to complex problems.”

NPS students have completed several tours of duty before coming to Monterey. “They have tactical experience, and they have operational experience, although not at a senior level,” said another facilitator, Matt Largent, head of forecasting, assessment and transition at Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic in Charleston, South Carolina. “This workshop invites them to be part of the higher-level conversation.”

Another facilitator, retired Marine Col. Todd Lyons, vice president for the NPS Alumni Association and Foundation, said the workshop was as much about problem framing as problem solving.

Prof. Lyla Englehorn was the workshop facilitator.

“My biggest goal in any of these workshops is to introduce a new toolbox to approach a complex problem space — what we call ‘wicked problems,’” she said. “You can’t propose a solution or solve a problem until you understand the status quo.”

“When we present these emerging technologies in this forum, it gives our concept generation team members a sense of what’s just outside of the box, what’s the adjacent possible,” she said. “We hear ‘thinking outside the box’ all the time. But stand on the edge of that box, what can you touch? What’s within the potential 2035 time-frame?”

Following panel discussions and presentations from leading technical experts, the teams and their embedded facilitators had seven hours of scheduled concept generation time to meet that challenge, and presented their best concepts on the final morning of the workshop.

According to Englehorn, this applied approach ensures that NPS provides defense-focused graduate education, including classified studies and interdisciplinary research, to advance the operational effectiveness, technological leadership and warfighting advantage of the naval service.

Avoiding Cost, Time, Jetlag

While the coronavirus presented challenges, there were also opportunities. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed all resident work at the Monterey campus to a remote environment, so WIC workshop became a mostly virtual affair. 

Englehorn said in spite of the pandemic, the workshop was able to include a greater breadth of participants around the world this year.

“We broadened our participation quite extensively. Technology allowed us to do that. We had students participating remotely from Singapore and Romania, and a U.S. Marine Corps officer who is on an exchange program at the Colombian Naval Academy.”

The NPS Virtual Campus employs a combination of remote learning tools, including Microsoft Teams for plenary session and concept generation team breakout rooms. The NPS distance learning platform, Sakai, supported all materials for the workshop which allowed for participants to review materials in advance, reference them throughout the workshop as well after the results have been posted. The teams also used the MURAL3 collaboration tool for concept generation work in an unclassified remote environment.

“We normally conduct this as a resident activity. Most of the teams were working at unclassified levels because of the way we executed the event. However, one team of select NPS students was able to gather in person on campus (following strict COVID 19 protocols) working on technologies related to informational warfare at the classified level. They brainstormed the old-fashioned way, with whiteboards, Post-it notes and Sharpies,” Englehorn said.

Even if Covid-19 restrictions are removed next year, Englehorn said NPS may keep some of its newly learned best practices.

“Having hybrid events using these online tools allows us to involve many more people working on these problems,” he said. “We’re not looking at the ‘new normal,’ but the ‘new next.’”

NASHUA, N.H. — BAE Systems has received a $60 million contract from Lockheed Martin to manufacture and deliver additional advanced missile seekers for the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), BAE Systems announced in a Dec. 8 release. The seeker comprises long-range sensors and targeting technology that help the stealthy missile find and engage protected maritime targets in challenging electromagnetic environments. 

“Our warfighters need resilient, long-range precision strike capabilities to compete with modern adversaries,” said Bruce Konigsberg, Radio Frequency Sensors product area director at BAE Systems. “We’re proud to partner with Lockheed Martin in delivering this distinct competitive advantage to U.S. warfighters.” 

LRASM combines extended range with increased survivability and lethality to deliver long-range precision strike capabilities. LRASM is designed to detect and destroy specific targets within groups of ships by employing advanced technologies that reduce dependence on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, network links, and GPS navigation in contested environments. 

This LRASM seeker contract continues the transition of the program from Accelerated Acquisition to Low-Rate Production. BAE Systems has delivered more than 50 systems to date that have demonstrated excellent technical performance over multiple test events. The company also is working to make the seeker system smaller, more capable, and more efficient to produce. 

The LRASM is being Deployed on Air Force B-1B bombers and Navy F/A-18E/F strike fighters. 

BAE Systems’ LRASM seeker technology builds on the company’s decades of experience designing and producing state-of-the-art electronic warfare technology, and its expertise in small form factor design, signal processing, target detection, and identification. 

Work on the LRASM sensor will be conducted at BAE Systems’ facilities in Wayne, New Jersey; Greenlawn, New York; and Nashua, New Hampshire. 

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Coast Guard Cutter Joseph Napier repatriated 12 migrants from an interdicted illegal voyage and transferred two men, who were rescued in a separate case, to a Dominican Republic navy vessel Monday near Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, the Coast Guard 7th District said in a Dec. 7 release. 

The migrant interdiction is the result of ongoing multiagency efforts in support of Operation Caribbean Guard and the Caribbean Border Interagency Group (CBIG). 

“I commend the performance of the Joseph Napier crew in both of these cases,” said Lt. Matthew Miller, cutter Joseph Napier commanding officer.  “Their swift and assertive actions ensured the safe transfer of two rescued boaters and 12 migrants to Dominican Republic navy authorities.” 

The migrant interdiction occurred Dec. 6, when the crew of a Puerto Rico Police Joint Forces of Rapid Action marine unit stopped a 35-foot makeshift boat, approximately three and half nautical miles west of Aguadilla. Coast Guard watchstanders diverted the cutter Joseph Napier to assist. 

Once on scene, the crew of the cutter Joseph Napier safely embarked 10 men and two women from the grossly overloaded boat.  The crew of the Joseph Napier provided the migrants with lifejackets before embarking the Coast Guard cutter, and once they were safely aboard, they received food, water, shelter and basic medical attention. 

Later Sunday afternoon, Coast Guard watchstanders in Sector San Juan received a communication from a Good Samaritan aboard the motor vessel Statia Glory, who reported being on scene with a disabled vessel with two people aboard, approximately eight nautical miles south of Mona Island, Puerto Rico. The cutter Joseph Napier diverted and once on scene embarked the two men from the disabled vessel that was taking on water from incoming swells.  The men, who claimed to be Dominican Republic nationals, had no life jackets, marine radio or cell phone communications onboard. 

Cutter Joseph Napier is a 154-foot fast response cutter homeported in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy will have to significantly increase the size of the fleet in coming decades to deter China from a risky escalation of the great power competition, the Defense Department’s top uniformed officer says.

“We’re  maritime nation,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, told the U.S. Naval Institute’s Dec. 3 Defense Forum Washington webcast. “And the defense of the United States depends on air power and sea power, primarily.”

Milley said the international rule-based order that arose after World War II, and for seven decades was maintained by the U.S. Navy “perhaps more than any other element,” is under stress, from climate change and the economic distress caused by the coronavirus pandemic to the diffusion of power, from two Cold War super powers, to regional powers like Russia, Iran and North Korea.  If that order falls apart, Milley warned, the great power competition could “turn into great power war.”

The transformation of China into the world’s second-largest economy, with an equally robust military, both in size and capability, poses a “longer term, almost existential challenge,” Milley said. “I’m not saying you’re going to have a war with China. I’m saying we want to prevent a war with China.”

However, it will take large investment in U.S. forces to prevent that from happening, he said.

“We’re going to have to have a much larger fleet than we have today, if we’re serious about great power competition and deterring great power war, and if we’re serious about dominant capability over something like China or some other power that has significant capability,” Milley said.

However, he expects funding to be tight.

“We need, roughly speaking, a consistent, predictable and timely budget that gives about 3 to 5 percent real growth,” Milley said. But with the demand to address the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the  damage it’s done to the U.S. economy, “I don’t see that as a realistic thing in the coming year.”

Acquiring a 500-plus-ship Navy in the next 25 years, as recommended in the Pentagon’s Battle Force 2045 plan, is “an aim point, an aspiration” Miley said, but to stay ahead of China and other competitors may require at least 500 ships in the future. As many as 140 to 250 vessels will be unmanned, he noted.

“Sailorless ships, robots on the water and under the water. That’s as big a change as going from sail to coal,” Milley said.

The U.S. Navy will also need between 70 and 90 more submarines, he added.

In the changing battle environment,  air, land and sea forces will need to be small, widely distributed and difficult to detect while remaining movable and highly lethal using long range precision, directed fires, Milley said.  Unlike the conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the environment in a great power battle will be contested, and “all forces are going to have to assume they are going to be cut off. So tactical data is essential,” Milley added.

SAN DIEGO — General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. recently completed full-scale static (FSS) testing on the MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) wing after three months of extensive testing, the company said in a Dec. 7 release.

MQ-9B variants include SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian RPA produced by GA-ASI.  

The testing included multiple load cases to 150 percent of expected maximum flight loads. The wing was loaded using specially designed fixtures to apply a distributed load across the wingspan – simulating gust and maneuver flight conditions – with no failures.   

“Successful completion of FSS testing on the MQ-9B wing was a critical step in proving that our design meets stringent certification standards for structural strength and integrity,” said Dee Wilson, vice president, Engineering Research Development & Design Hardware. “The wing performed as expected, matching analytical predictions closely. Our engineering design, stress and test teams are commended for an exceptional effort in meeting this critical milestone.” 

This particular wing design is the culmination of a large development effort from multiple areas within GA-ASI and represents a major milestone in qualifying the MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian RPA to fly in non-segregated airspace. The wing test success also establishes the baseline wing design for the entire MQ-9B product line. This is critical as GA-ASI starts deliveries to the multiple customers pursuing the MQ-9B including the United Kingdom, Belgium and Australia.