Northrop Grumman Corporation has successfully completed the first flight campaign of its Electronically-Scanned Multifunction Reconfigurable Integrated Sensor (EMRIS).

These flights, completed in partnership with government partners and on a government-provided aircraft, are the next stage of technology maturation for EMRIS. The flights demonstrated the open architecture nature of EMRIS by using third-party integration and operation. New software was rapidly deployed during flights, demonstrating the reconfigurable nature of the sensor.

Krys Moen, vice president, advanced mission capabilities, Northrop Grumman says: “Dozens of successful flights with EMRIS demonstrated the ability to reduce development timelines and lower program costs by leveraging our partnerships with, and advancements across, all military services. Our solutions utilise digital engineering and advancements in microelectronics to provide agile capabilities for both crewed and uncrewed platforms.”

EMRIS was designed using common building blocks and software containerization allowing for rapid, cost-effective production, providing these advanced capabilities to the warfighters quickly.

EMRIS’s fully digital Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) utilises technology from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Arrays on Commercial Timescales program, combined with the government’s open architecture standards. By applying the flexibility of a digital AESA, EMRIS can perform multiple functions including radar, electronic warfare and communications, simultaneously.

As part of EMRIS’ flights, Northrop Grumman demonstrated the ability to quickly leverage technologies developed for other programs to adapt multiple fielded capabilities into EMRIS. The second EMRIS array is entering testing, and Northrop Grumman is in the process of demonstrating its scalable nature by fabricating two smaller EMRIS apertures for lower cost and size-constrained application demonstrations.

EMRIS demonstrates the value of a product line designed from the beginning to leverage open, scalable software along with modular digital building blocks to enable a common sensor baseline. All work is in support of a wide range of existing platform upgrades as well as new emerging opportunities.