U.S. Army: Contract to NGC for unattended surveillance systems

SCORPION II is the next generation of persistent autonomous surveillance systems for force protection and intelligence gathering.
The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation a contract to provide SCORPION and SCORPION II Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) systems to protect soldiers with a remote persistent unattended surveillance capability for improved situational awareness and actionable intelligence.
Northrop Grumman’s SCORPION UGS systems have been deployed worldwide. The primary function of SCORPION is to provide persistent surveillance for situational awareness, remote area monitoring and perimeter security.
“While SCORPION remains the UGS system of choice in Iraq, Afghanistan and other deployments, SCORPION II’s size, weight and wireless performance improvements significantly increase the available mission set for the warfighter,” said Martin Simoni, site director of Northrop Grumman’s Xetron facility. “This contract both supports existing systems and enables multiple organizations to combine their requirements for new systems, saving money for the U.S. government.”
Under the terms of this indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract, Northrop Grumman will provide SCORPION and SCORPION II wired and wireless UGS systems and support services over a five-year period.
SCORPION II Unattended Target Recognition Systems
This fully autonomous Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) system comprises wired or wireless day and night vision Electro-Optic (EO), seismic, magnetic, and passive IR sensors, wireless local RF communications, and a remote universal communications gateway. The universal gateway provides secure, two-way, LOS and BLOS communications for around the clock global surveillance of time critical targets.
SCORPION II Long, Short and Point Blank Range Target Recognition System provides critical worldwide data and imagery for long or short duration military and intelligence gathering operations. This next generation system incorporates new technologies and improved performance with reduced size, weight, and volume when compared to its predecessor.
Multiple, geographically separate SCORPION II systems can transmit imagery and sensor data to distributed users world wide. Data from separate sensor systems are combined to form a Common Operational Picture (COP).
The robust, modular, scalable, open interface architecture implemented in the Scorpion II system is easily adaptable to a myriad of COTS sensors from most vendors as well as a wide variety of communication links.
SCORPION II combines unmatched wireless day and night imagery performance with significantly reduced size and weight, making portability and concealment faster, safer and lower in power consumption and lengthening mission life.
Source : Northrop Grumman Corporation