Mississippi Press
December 3, 2013
Northrop Grumman begins building NATO drones in Moss Point
April M. Havens
MOSS POINT, Mississippi: Many NATO countries have “a crying need” for the capabilities that will be provided by five unmanned aircraft being built by Northrop Grumman Corp., NATO’s Jim Edge said today.
Edge, with NATO’s Alliance Ground Surveillance Management Agency, gathered with other leaders Tuesday at Northrop’s Unmanned Systems Center in Moss Point to celebrate the start of fabrication on the first drone.
“The NATO forces are counting on our success,” he told attendees that included Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Col. Giancarlo Filippo, who is with the Italian delegation to NATO.
“Operations in Libya and Afghanistan and those over the waters off the coast of eastern Africa all prove that there’s a crying need for this type of capability,” Edge said. “We need this capability. Mississippi is making history as far as I’m concerned.”
In May 2012, Northrop secured a $1.7 billion contract to build five of the unmanned aircraft for NATO.
The Alliance Ground Surveillance system will provide NATO with unprecedented near real-time terrestrial and maritime information gathering, leaders said, and the drones will contribute to NATO’s joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability.
Edge said the drones will be “very capable, very high tech and very robust.”
The aircraft are modeled after Northrop’s Block 40 Global Hawk drones and come equipped with an advanced ground surveillance radar sensor.
“With the ability to fly up to 60,000 feet and for more than 30 hours, the NATO AGS system is uniquely suited to support NATO missions worldwide,” said Jim Culmo, vice president of Northrop’s high-altitude, long-endurance enterprise.
Fifteen nations – Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United States – are paying for the system, but all 28 alliance nations will support the program long-term.
Filippo echoed that the capabilities provided are “very crucial” to NATO. Italy will be the host country for the drones, which will be stationed at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily.
Mississippi workers should be proud of their role in producing the aircraft, Filippo said.
The Moss Point center will build fuselages for the aircraft, as it does for the Air Force’s Global Hawk program and the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance program, among other programs.
The governor agreed that the Unmanned Systems Center workers perform “stellar” work and said he is thankful for Northrop Grumman’s ongoing presence in Mississippi.
“As governor of the state of Mississippi, I’m going to make sure that we continue to move forward in the area of unmanned vehicles,” Bryant said. “Mississippi must be positioned … to take a leading role in that economy. Make no mistake, unmanned systems are the future, not only when it comes to military applications … but for a host of commercial applications as well.”
Culmo noted that other countries – South Korea, Japan and Australia in particular – are also interested in the Global Hawk system and want to purchase them in the future.
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