Northrop to install Leonardo radar on MQ-8C unmanned helicopters

Military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) experts at Northrop Grumman Corp. will install a sophisticated surface-search radar system on the U.S. Navy's fleet of MQ-8C Fire Scout shipboard unmanned helicopters. Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., announced a $32.9 million order to the Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems segment in San Diego to install the AN/ZPY-8 Osprey MM radar from Leonardo MW Ltd. in Edinburgh, Scotland, aboard the Navy MQ-8C fleet. Northrop Grumman is the designer and systems integrator of the MQ-8C Fire Scout, an unmanned version of the Bell 407 helicopter from Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company in Fort Worth, Texas. The manned version of the Bell 407 seats seven, can carry a useful load of 2,347 pounds, flies as fast as 140 knots, and has a range of 324 nautical miles.