KEVIN MICKEY, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, AIR DOMINANCE DIVISION, NORTHROP GRUMMAN AERONAUTICS SYSTEMS

Your company’s history with the U.S. Navy and with naval aviation is well recognized and goes back a long way. Can you expand on the nature of this partnership and how it has evolved over the years?

Northrop Grumman’s partnership with the Navy goes back more than 90 years. Through that time, the company has worked to fully understand the needs of the Navy and develop solutions to operate aircraft in some of the most challenging environments. The company’s commitment to this partnership has only grown stronger as we ensure the needs of our customers are fully understood and incorporated into our offerings.

What have been some of Northrop Grumman’s notable achievements in this area?

As a premier provider of naval aviation capabilities, Northrop Grumman’s legacy companies were the first to design landing floats for sea planes, and delivered large numbers of carrier-based aircraft during World War II and into the Korean War. From the 1960s to 1980s the company developed and delivered the A-6 Intruder, C-2 Greyhound, E-2C Hawkeye, designed the YF-17 as the precursor to the F-18, and the vaunted F-14 Tomcat. These aircraft played integral roles in defining how the Navy would operate against peer threats during the Cold War while offering the versatility needed for these aircraft to be used for a variety of missions.

Kevin Mickey, Vice President and General Manager, Air Dominance Division, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems

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From the 1990s to today, Northrop Grumman [has played] significant roles in the design, development, and sustainment of the F-18 and F-35 programs while delivering the Navy’s newest airborne early warning aircraft, the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye. The company has also helped pave the way for the use of unmanned aircraft in naval operations to include the MQ-8 Fire Scout and MQ-4C Triton. Northrop Grumman also plays a large role in providing sensors and other missions systems on aircraft, including the electronic warfare capability on the EA-18G Growler.

In 2013, the company worked with the Navy to demonstrate the first takeoff and landing of an autonomous aircraft from the deck of an aircraft carrier through the X-47B. This also included the first air refueling of an unmanned aircraft in 2015. These were pivotal moments in naval aviation, proving that an autonomously controlled aircraft could safely be incorporated into future carrier aircraft operations.

How does Northrop Grumman’s distinguished history in building U.S. Navy aircraft influence the company culture today?

Our focus on developing and delivering purpose-built aircraft and capabilities to the U.S. Navy is a defining part of our culture. We spend more time trying to understand the requirements through continuous communication to ensure we’re understanding what our customers need. This helps us take a systems approach to the design of our systems, helping our teams understand what an aircraft needs to do, but also defining how the aircraft is supported over its entire life cycle.

Within the halls of Northrop Grumman, we also emphasize the important work we are doing to support and protect our service men and women who operate the capabilities we provide. It’s vitally important that our employees understand and feel a connection to our servicemembers who make the commitment to protect our nation so they understand the critical need to deliver high-quality systems. This is our commitment, which drives at the heart of everything we do.

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Through these actions, we work to be a trusted partner with the Navy as we ensure the needs of our customers are taken into account from development, delivery, and throughout the servicing of the system.

What do you see as the future challenges and milestones ahead for Northrop Grumman in its work with the U.S. Navy?

In my opinion, the growing challenges adversaries present to the U.S. Navy are their attempts to deny access to a contested region. This will drive industry to develop new ways for naval commanders to gain access to these areas. For aircraft, this will involve greater use of technologies that improve survivability while increasing their connectivity with other battlefield assets that provide greater situational awareness under the Navy’s Project Overmatch. Additionally, pairing manned and unmanned assets will be key to taking on greater operational risk.

All of these capabilities will sustain an edge in day-to-day operations while also ensuring the Navy’s readiness for a highend fight.

As an industry partner to the Navy, it will be important to understand how these capabilities will be delivered quickly and affordably. Our adversaries’ technological capabilities are catching up rapidly and we must develop capabilities we can field today while giving them the means to be more easily upgraded as technologies used in future conflicts evolve.

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