Northrop Grumman Corporation completed the first of three fuselages for the broad area maritime surveillance unmanned aircraft system (BAMS UAS) system development and demonstration (SDD) programme. The MQ-4C fuselage will undergo final assembly and system checkout at the company’s Palmdale, Calif. facility ahead of its first flight next year.

“This milestone follows our successful critical design review held last month and shows we are on track to meet our demonstration objectives,” said Steve Enewold, Northrop Grumman Vice President and Programme Manager for BAMS. “The second fuselage is under construction at our Moss Point facility and will eventually be part of our three-ship SDD test programme.”

The Northrop Grumman BAMS UAS is a versatile maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system to support a variety of missions. When operational, BAMS will play a key role in providing commanders with a persistent, reliable picture of surface threats, covering vast areas of open ocean and littoral regions, significantly augmenting the use of other manned assets to execute surveillance and reconnaissance tasks.