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F-35 Launches

An F-35B Lightning II aircraft assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 262 (Reinforced) executes a vertical landing aboard amphibious assault carrier USS Tripoli this past summer. Northrop Grumman builds the F-35 center fuselage. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

The year marks 100 years of aircraft carriers operating at the front lines of America’s military capability. Northrop Grumman was there from the start, and continues to support Navy carrier operations through: the E-2 Hawkeye, a carrier-capable tactical airborne early warning aircraft; the F-35 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft; the EA-18 Growler electronic warfare aircraft, and the MQ-4C Triton, a high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle.

Here Kevin Mickey, sector vice president and general manager for Future Air Dominance at Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems, reflects on the company’s long history of support of the carrier mission, and looks forward to the future.

Breaking Defense: This year marks the 100th anniversary for Navy aircraft carriers. What are the key successes and the major roles that Northrop Grumman has played since the beginning of carrier operations?

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Kevin Mickey, sector vice president and general manager for Future Air Dominance at Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems.

Mickey: Our legacy shows our commitment to naval aviation success. Northrop Grumman and its legacy companies have been strong partners in developing and delivering carrier fighter aircraft for over 90 years now. We delivered the first operational carrier-based aircraft to the Navy, and we were the prime industry partner on the F-14 Tomcat.

Today, Northrop Grumman continues to be highly involved in carrier aviation, primarily through its E-2 Hawkeye, along with significant production and mission system capabilities on the F-35 and F/A-18. We’re also the prime industry partner on the EA-18 Growler, as well as the MQ-4C Triton, which supports the carrier wing with critical intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Our relationship with the Navy has been one of shared commitment to preserving freedom while delivering the most lethal and survivable systems that provide the US with an edge. We provided the Navy’s first airborne early warning aircraft, and we continue to be committed to the future of naval aviation, as well as a partner on both crewed and uncrewed aircraft in the future.

Breaking Defense: Discuss the evolution of carrier-based operations today, and Navy’s emerging concept of operations: distributed maritime operations and all-domain operations.

Mickey: In today’s threat scenarios, the carrier and carrier ops are playing a key role in projecting power. Where and how the threats are being envisioned in the future, and how those will be prosecuted, has changed in the last few years. We’re adapting to those changes, along with the Navy.

We provide a number of networking and communication technologies that are going to allow for information dominance in a highly contested battlespace. That includes our work on the E-2D, Triton, and other surveillance systems that can more easily share information to the naval commanders and across that battlefield. Connectivity, networking, crewed and uncrewed platforms — those are what the future looks like, and Northrop Grumman is and intends to be a major part of that future.

Breaking Defense: How have aircraft like Triton and E-2D factored into Project Overmatch exercises, for example, and other joint exercises that Navy carrier groups have participated in over the last couple years?

Mickey: We have been a major part of those exercises. Much of that is sensitive information — how they participate and what their capabilities are — but the E-2D has been recognized many times as the quarterback of the fleet when it is out performing its work from carriers.

Triton’s ability to conduct ISR over very long ranges adds tremendous value to the carrier missions envisioned for the future. 

Breaking Defense: What is Northrop Grumman’s role in F-35, arguably the most important military program in the world at the moment?

Mickey: We’re very proud of our contribution to F-35 and to F/A-18, as well. We play a major role in the manufacture and the construction of significant parts of both those airframes, including the major fuselage center section. For both F-35B and C [the Marine Corps vertical takeoff and landing version and the carrier-based version, respectively], we build those sections on our line in Palmdale, along with the A model. A major portion of the F-35 rolls off the assembly line every 30 hours. We are talking about the major fuselage center section.

With F-18, we build roughly 40 percent of the structure. We make a significant contribution to the fighters that are sitting on the carrier decks of today, along with E-2D, which, of course, we build as the prime contractor. 

Operation Unified Response

Navy maintenance technicians conduct maintenance on the rotodome of an E-2C Hawkeye at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. Northrop Grumman builds the aircraft, which is considered the quarterback of the fleet. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

Breaking Defense: F-35 is being bought by many of our allies. Internationally, what will their role be with carriers and amphibious assault ships operated by F-35 partner nations?

Mickey: The fact that so many nations have either agreed to buy the airplane, or continue to contemplate buying the airplane, speaks volumes about the capability of that platform, about the connectivity and what that airplane brings to a networked war fight. 

We continue to be very optimistic about the future of F-35. We continue to see its role in both  land-based and sea-based fights. To your point, A, B, and C models will all be contributing to the future scenarios of power projection.

Breaking Defense: Over the next three to five years, JADC2 and distributed maritime operations will need to be dependent on capabilities like autonomous operations. How will Northrop Grumman support the Navy with autonomy and other sorts of distributed capabilities?

Mickey: The fight of tomorrow is going to be highly dependent on platforms with networking and survivability capabilities to allow the Navy to operate both in contested and uncontested environments.

As we think about that future, Northrop Grumman provides a number of networking and communications technologies to the Navy that allow for the information dominance that’s going to be so precious in the battlespace of the future. That includes E-2D, Triton, and other surveillance systems that share information so that the naval commanders can make informed decisions.

On the autonomous front, our autonomous-systems expertise is primed to support the future of naval aviation. We are already demonstrating how that will work, with unmanned teaming taking place through systems like Triton and Fire Scout. As we look to the future, the company is continuing to develop new crewed and uncrewed systems to pair with aircraft as part of the Navy’s family of systems.

Breaking Defense: How can those platforms become gateways in JADC2 and all-domain environments for the collection and transfer of data to facilitate naval operations?

Mickey: Being able to bring together the capabilities of two of our company’s business sectors — the Aeronautics sector that I’m part of and the Mission Systems sector — and to integrate those into platforms of today and platforms of the future, is an advantage and a discriminator when it comes to the networking and communications technologies that will be part of the future.

Everyone talks about “every platform, any sensor, any shooter,” and everything being networked. We are positioned well to bring that to a reality. We are bringing it to a reality. And we’ll continue to make strides on those nodes in the future, such that everything will be connected.

Breaking Defense: What’s your list of the Northrop Grumman’s most significant naval carrier aviation accomplishments?

Mickey: I’ll take the easy way out and say every one of the Cat series of naval aviation platforms — Wildcat, Hellcat, Bearcat, Tomcat — is a testament to Northrop Grumman’s legacy companies and to today’s commitment to naval aviation. All of those have had a tremendous impact.

The F6F Wildcat entered service in 1940 as a U.S. Navy and a British Royal Navy aircraft. It was developed to counter faster adversarial aircraft, and there were over 12,000 of those aircraft built — 11,000 of them in just a couple years. My personal favorite is the F8F Bearcat. Over 1,200 of those were built. It was the company’s last piston-engine fighter.

And then, of course, the F-14 Tomcat, which entered service in 1970. This fighter aircraft incorporated all the lessons learned from those previous combat experiences against other fighters. That aircraft included so many innovations to naval aviation, and there were just over 700 of those platforms built.

We were also the industry partner to the Navy to prove how an autonomous fighter-sized aircraft could take off and land from an aircraft carrier, as well as conduct autonomous aerial refueling. In 2013, the X-47B unmanned combat aircraft demonstration was autonomously flown on and off a carrier many times. That has paved the way for the future of uncrewed aircraft programs that are slated for operations from Navy carriers in the future.

Breaking Defense: Final thoughts

Mickey: One of our tenets is a commitment to shared success. We are certainly committed to shared success with naval aviation in the future. We are proud of our engagement and partnership with the Navy.