Scion Showcased At Silent Swarm

Defence firm Northrop Grumman has hailed the success of its two complementary autonomous systems, Scion and Helix, at the U.S. Navy's Silent Swarm 24 exercise.

Held this summer at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center (CRTC) in Alpena, Michigan, Silent Swarm is coordinated by the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana. Its purpose is experimentation with technologies that can be employed on small unmanned maritime and airborne systems.

At Silent Swarm 24 Northrop Grumman tested two of its new autonomous capabilities developed for smaller Uncrewed Autonomous Systems (UAS). Called Helix and Scion, they are intended to transform existing commercial uncrewed platforms into resilient combat and surveillance systems.

As per a recent company press statement, Helix and Scion demonstrate "Northrop Grumman’s readiness to fill existing maritime domain awareness gaps and securely find, fix and track elements in maritime operations."

Electronic Warfare (EW) payload Scion has been tailored specifically to maritime surface operations and can connect to Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) USV platforms using a common interface.

Helix combines data from a variety of uncrewed platforms, payloads and software, helping to enable autonomous multi-domain operations: it helps provide operators with a three-dimensional, dynamic view of the battlespace in a virtual environment.

“We developed an initial proof of concept for Scion’s capabilities for the Navy in 2023,” said Matt O’Driscoll, chief engineer for Scion, Northrop Grumman. “Building on last year’s successful demonstration, we added five uncrewed systems in the air and two on the surface for this year’s Silent Swarm exercise and all of the systems worked collaboratively and autonomously to find target vessels.”

Northrop Grumman's demonstration included a USV carrying Scion, which collaborated with UAVs launched and controlled by Helix to find, fix, track and target vessels. Helix provided the autonomy engine and gave operators a near-real-time, multi-layered view of the mission landscape.

“At Silent Swarm, we showcased the combination of the Helix software and the Scion payload as an EW system capable of finding and locating radio frequency emissions over the water,” said Tyler Dillstrom, chief engineer for Helix, Northrop Grumman. “Our autonomy software in control of the USVs used those detections to correlate, identify and track targets from the air and on the surface.”   

• You can read more details on the Northrop Grumman website