Northrop Grumman wins USAF AIMS contract

MELBOURNE, Fla., March 4 (UPI) -- Northrop Grumman has won a U.S. Air Force contract to upgrade capabilities on the AIMS IT system.

Northrop Grumman said in a statement last week it had "received a contract from the Air Force Research Lab -- AFRL -- to prepare the Advanced Information Management System -- AIMS -- for transition to major programs of record. Under the contract, Northrop Grumman will conduct risk reduction activities to ensure real time recording and information dissemination capabilities are aligned with current and emerging Air Force platform sensors. The contract is valued at $1.1 million."

"The Advanced Information Management System, which serves as a storage resource broker, resulted from the integration of AFRL's Joint Battle-space Infosphere Reference Implementation information broker and Northrop Grumman's Advanced Information Architecture -- AIA -- fast recording and dissemination system," the company said.

"The AIA-enhanced system provides war fighters with critical information on demand, through existing operational communications. Key to this capability is the real time recording, cataloging, and brokering of information at nodes across the battle-space. The AIMS capability enables war fighters to discover vast amounts of information through subscription and query services," Northrop Grumman said.

Northrop Grumman said it "recently demonstrated the integration of AIMS into the U.S. Army's Warfighter Information Network-Tactical -- WIN-T -- baseline line-of-sight link, the Highband Networking Radio developed by Harris and BAE Systems."

"The AIMS capability ensures historic and newly acquired information from airborne battlefield sensors, edge users, and other cooperating information sources is provided directly to war fighters in airborne command centers, strike aircraft, surface ships and on the ground," said Richard Wassmuth, Northrop Grumman program manager.

"Providing near real-time information is an essential capability for our war fighters across the battle-space," Wassmuth said.

"This service-oriented architecture of airborne, sea and ground federated servers provides even single war fighters, operating in remote locations, access to battlefield information generated by a multitude of sensors within their mission area. This means of immediate information collection and distribution is a force multiplier during combat operations and essential for effective and timely battlefield coordination and situational awareness," Wassmuth said.