Northrop Grumman after the nineties

[mz]

What has the company actually been doing since B-2 and YF-23?

It's bought a lot of other companies: Teledyne Ryan (1999), Litton Industries (2001), Newport News(2001), TRW (2002) and Scaled Composites (2007). I might have missed some. Did the B-2 and some systems work finance all that?

I guess if TRW cost only 6 billion it's not that huge compared to the B-2 program that cost 20 billion.

B-2 production was completed in 2000, and design was of course completed much earlier.

Global Hawk, which first flew in 1998, was inherited from Teledyne Ryan, and superficially it seems like it wouldn't have kept a healthy major airplane manufacturer going on, as airplane design wise, it's been ready for a long time anyway. Seems the cost of that program had ballooned up to 10 billion.

Here are their financial reports:
http://investor.northropgrumman.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112386&p=irol-financialreport
In 2000 they had revenue about 7 billion and profit 700 million.



Without doing any real research, I lay forth the speculation:
They've had some sizable black projects keeping designers and some production facilities busy after B-2. (I do think the "mystery aircraft" photos show a regular B-2 though.)

Wouldn't it make perfect sense for a much more capable stealthy UAV than the diminutive RQ-170 to exist?

The other alternative is that NG has not been doing much prime airplane design work anymore, just systems.

 

[Sundog]

Wouldn't it make perfect sense for a much more capable stealthy UAV than the diminutive RQ-170 to exist?

The other alternative is that NG has not been doing much prime airplane design work anymore, just systems.

You mean like the RQ-180? Or X-47?

 

[GTX]

Northrop Grumman has also been a major player in the F-35 both in terms f major airframe components and the avionics.

 

[RadicalDisconnect]

APG-77, APG-81, AAQ-37, X-47, LRS-B (a bit dubious), RQ-180.

 

[GTX]

Further to my last post, here is a summary of Northrop Grumman's participation on the F-35: http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/F35Lightning/Documents/F-35_brochure.pdf

 

[mz]

Wouldn't it make perfect sense for a much more capable stealthy UAV than the diminutive RQ-170 to exist?

The other alternative is that NG has not been doing much prime airplane design work anymore, just systems.

You mean like the RQ-180? Or X-47?

Gah! I feel really stupid. I must have forgotten RQ-180. I would have assumed something was done a lot earlier. The first B-2 went operational in 1994. That's a 11 year long gap to alleged RQ-180 start around 2005, I guess the X-47A (first flight 2003) and X-47 and what J-UCAS stuff you have were the filler in between.

The other stuff is just subcontracting limited scope stuff, mostly radars.

But maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. Was very tired when I posted the original.

 

[GTX]

The other stuff is just subcontracting limited scope stuff, mostly radars.

Yeah, just minor subcontracting… :


This is just a minor thing to add to the F-35:

Things such as this are also little jobs:

 

[bring_it_on]

The future direction of its projects would be interesting to follow. They teamed up with MDD on the YF23 and with LMA on the F-35. It would be interesting to see whether they go alone on the FA-XX and FX programs or look to pick a partner yet again. They clearly have an edge in unmanned systems and even Boeing execs recognize that

I think what you have seen is that Northrop Grumman clearly has a strong position. Lockheed Martin has done well. Boeing has had its moments.

http://aviationweek.com/defense/face-face-boeings-defense-space-security-head

From what is known they are alone on the LRS_B as far as a major contractor is concerned.