Northrop Grumman has rolled out Beacon, a next-gen autonomous testbed ecosystem to speed up the delivery of autonomous mission capabilities.
Built as an open-architecture ecosystem, Beacon lets external partners run mission autonomy code alongside Northrop’s operational flight systems in a digitally networked test environment.
The testbed uses a modified Model 437 Vanguard aircraft, built by Northrop subsidiary Scaled Composites and now configured for optionally autonomous flight, for real-world trials.
“Beacon is sixth-generation autonomous software development,” said Tom Jones, corporate president of Aeronautics Systems at Northrop Grumman.
“It’s backed by our decades of leadership in designing and building operational autonomous aircraft and it’s serving as a bridge across industry to significantly reduce the time and cost it takes to bring new autonomous mission capabilities to our customers.”
According to the company, at least four third-party partners are already on board. Among them is Shield AI, manufacturer of the V-BAT drone and Hivemind autonomy software, Jones told Axios.
Flight demonstrations are set to begin later this year.
