Northrop, Aurora to share in $499M Air Force vehicle research contract

Northrop Grumman and Aurora Flight Sciences win places on a potential eight-year, $499 million Air Force contract to research new air vehicle technologies.

Northrop Grumman and Aurora Flight Sciences have won positions on a potential eight-year, $499 million contract to research new technologies for the Air Force for efforts to develop new air vehicles.

The Air Force received six offers for the Aerospace Systems Air Platform Technology Research program. A January broad agency announcement from the Air Force says the contract covers a five-year ordering period for performance over seven years.

Under ASAPTR, contractors will conduct research to develop, demonstrate, integrate and transition new air vehicle technologies and systems that can deliver weapons, payloads and cargo worldwide.

Aerospace vehicle research-and-development efforts will focus on areas such as new configurations, aeromechanics, propulsion, structures, computational fluid dynamics and computational structural mechanics.

Awardees will also perform R&D in control sciences such as hardware and architecture and be responsible for vehicle integration and demonstration, according to Deltek.

Northrop's work will take place in Redondo Beach, Calif. and Aurora's is in Manassas, Va.