Special Mission Aircraft

Special Mission Aircraft with sun setting behind it on gravel airstrip

Northrop Grumman’s Special Mission Aircraft product portfolio provides affordable, responsive and advanced capabilities to customer-preferred platforms.

Northrop Grumman’s expertise includes integrating aircraft – including the Cessna 208B Caravan, Alenia C-27J Spartan, CASA CN-235/295, Lockheed C-130 Hercules, Bombardier Dash-8, Hawker Beechcraft King Air, Sikorsky H-60 Blackhawk, AgustaWestland AW139 and others – with attack and ISR capabilities. Additionally Northrop Grumman provides Contractor Logistics Support services around the globe. Northrop Grumman’s extensive expertise in weaponization, mission systems architecture and integration and certification of complex subsystems is proven on the battle field and enables rapid fielding

AC-235 aircraft flying

AC-235 Light Gunship

Northrop Grumman’s special mission aircraft offerings integrate intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors, fire-control equipment, and an LW30 mm link-fed gun system. These capabilities are controlled by our STAR Mission System, which provides both day-and-night reconnaissance and fire-control capabilities, and the ability to acquire, monitor and track items of interest.

The AC-235 light gunship provides customers with an affordable, enhanced capability to conduct responsive defense, counterinsurgency, and border surveillance and security missions on customer-preferred platforms.

AC-208 Aircraft

AC-208 Eliminator™ Armed Caravan Aircraft

The AC-208 Eliminator builds on Northrop Grumman’s battle-proven AC-208 Armed Caravan and offers customers a highly-capable and cost-effective reconnaissance and ground attack capability with a critical offensive and operational over-watch capability in the Counter-Insurgency (COIN) fight. The Eliminator is able to find, fix, identify, track, target, and engage emerging and time-sensitive targets with its 2.75″ guided rockets and/or AGM-114 HELLFIRE missile payload, based on mission requirements.

MC-27J Aircraft

MC-27J Multi-Mission Aircraft

The MC-27J is an adaptable and affordable solution to the various airborne multi-mission requirements fulfilled today by a wide variety of specialized and dedicated aircraft. It offers payload, persistence and out of area capabilities coupled with commonality of equipment and systems with larger multi-mission platforms but at much lower operational costs and with the operational flexibility of being able to operate form shorter runways also in hot and high conditions.

Maritime Patrol Aircraft Sensor Suite

Maritime Patrol Aircraft are outfitted with Northrop Grumman’s proprietary integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system. Our sophisticated sensor suite allows the MPA aircraft to simultaneously detect numerous activities of interest at substantial stand-off range.

Flight-station operators using the arrays of sensors, displays and data links can transmit critical data and intelligence instantaneously to ground and airborne control centers. This assists in the interception and investigation of vehicles, aircraft or persons of interest. The aircraft also record the data and imagery, which can subsequently be used for intelligence, investigation and prosecution.

Palletized Weapon System (PaWS)

The Palletized Weapon System (PaWS) is a rapidly reconfigurable collection of sensors, communications and weapons that can be installed onto most medium- to heavy-lift aircraft.

PaWS includes enhanced electro-optical/infrared targeting sensors, a trainable 30 mm cannon, precision-guided munitions, advanced communications and a networked mission management system. These modular modifications provide end users the ability to execute intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, strike, and mobility missions in support of deployed forces.