Northrop picked for high-end analytics work

Northrop Grumman will help the Air Force develop software for high-end analytics work under a $7.2 million contract.

The company will make streaming and static graph analytics processing software for the Air Force Research Laboratory.

While Northrop didn’t respond to a request for comment, graph analysis is an emerging computational field and can be used for identifying disease outbreaks, managing power grid disruptions, decision support and regulating algorithms, according to Graphanalytics.org.

The Air Force Research Laboratory wants Northrop to focus on five problem areas: anomaly detection, domain specific search, dependency mapping, N-x contingency analysis and causal modeling events.

Contingency analysis, for example, is used to design and operate a power network.

The Air Force wants Northrop to revisit uses of graph analytics that were abandoned in the past due to processing, power or size constraints.

The work sounds highly technical and you’d think there was a limited pool of potential bidders but Northrop had plenty of competition. According to the Defense Department's contracts digest, 32 companies submitted bids.

The contract runs through Oct. 5, 2021 and most of the work will take place in Linthicum Heights, Md. Northrop's mission systems segment is headquartered in Linthicum.