Northrop Grumman has been awarded an indefinite delivery indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract for the supply of its Scorpion Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) systems to the US Army.
Under the contract, the company will supply Scorpion and Scorpion II wired and wireless UGS systems along with support services for a duration of five years.
Northrop Grumman Xetron facility site director Martin Simoni said while Scorpion is the UGS system of choice in Iraq, Afghanistan and other deployments, Scorpion II’s size, weight and wireless performance significantly increase the available mission set for the warfighter.
"This contract both supports existing systems and enables multiple organizations to combine their requirements for new systems, saving money for the US government," Simoni added.
Scorpion family of UGS systems are designed to provide secure two-way, beyond line-of-sight communications for persistent surveillance for situational awareness, remote area monitoring and perimeter security.
The Scorpion is a fully autonomous, lightweight UGS system featuring day and night vision electro-optic (EO), seismic and magnetic sensors, wireless local radio-frequency (RF) communications and a remote communications gateway.
EO and infrared (IR) sensors provide persistent data and imagery to enable target classification, identification, global positioning system (GPS) location, and actionable intelligence for targets located up to 800m away.
The Scorpion II is a long, short and point blank range target recognition system capable of providing critical worldwide data and imagery for force protection and intelligence gathering operations.
Using seismic, magnetic or passive IR sensors, the next generation system transmit imagery and sensor data to distributed users worldwide, which is then combined to form a Common Operational Picture (COP).
Several hundred Scorpion systems are currently being deployed by the US Army Central Command (CENTCOM) in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).
