Northrop Grumman has completed a significant milestone in the production of Australia’s first MQ-4C Triton high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) aircraft.

The aircraft fuselage was mounted onto Triton’s one-piece wing. Once completed and delivered, Triton’s powerful payload and endurance will provide the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) with the ability to detect and analyse threats that were previously undetectable.

“This production milestone further demonstrates our commitment to both sides of the cooperative programme between the Royal Australian Air Force and the U.S. Navy,” said Rho Cauley-Bruner, Triton programme manager at Northrop Grumman. “We are on schedule to deliver Triton’s powerful capability in support of Australia’s national security.”

Australia’s first Triton is on track to be delivered just as the US Navy expects to achieve initial operating capability with its multi-intelligence Tritons, the same configuration Australia is receiving. The identical capabilities will allow the RAAF and US Navy to share data and maintain an unblinking autonomous intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting capability over some of the world’s most critical maritime regions.

Northrop Grumman’s family of autonomous high-altitude, long-endurance systems perform critical wide-area ISR collection.

Autonomous HALE systems operate across the world, with greater than 24-hour endurance, collecting essential ISR data over land and sea to enable rapid, informed decision-making. In the future, these systems will connect the joint force, implementing advanced autonomy and artificial intelligence/machine learning while delivering indispensable capabilities with fewer people to provide information at the speed of relevance.

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