By Ranjan Bhaduri
Arizona, Oct. 30, (THAINDIAN NEWS) Northrop Grumman(NYSE:NOC), has been given a contract by the Army Unmanned Aircraft System, for an amount of $6.2 million. The U.S company will be seen supporting the move made by the Hunter UAS training and engineering, in order to move to Utah so that all the UAS programs can be located to a central position. The facility will be relocating from its current place in Arizona to Utah’s Dugway Proving Grounds. The program manager of Northrop Grumman Technical Services, Karl Purdy stated that they were happy to “work shoulder to shoulder” along with the Army to facilitate this relocation. He also said that this move will allow the Army to “achieve synergy by having UAS assets in one location to improve interoperability and efficiency of assets.”

The facility is now based in Cochise College Flight Line, Douglas, Arizona and will be shifted to Rapid Integration and Acceptance Center (RIAC), Michael Army Airfield, Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah. The DPG is actually located around 85 miles southwest of Utah’s Salt Lake city. It is a US Army facility and covers around 801,505 acres in the Great Salt lake desert. Also, mountains surround the whole facility. The number of people living in the facility itself amounts to around 2016 as in the year 2000.

Hunter has currently been kept for contingency operations, Surveillance etc. It has around 82,000 flight hours, from which combat related hours are only 56,000. The company that has been given the contract, Northrop Grumman Corporation, has around 120,000 employees and is a security company leading globally. It provides innovative systems, solution and products in aerospace and other fields. It also provides ship building facilities and technical services to commercial customers along with the Government.