Company's Fire Scout Unmanned Aerial System Delivers Critical
     Communications, Enhanced Situational Awareness to Remote
                           Ground Troops

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla., Feb. 24, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Soldiers
participating in the U.S. Army's recent Expeditionary Warrior
Experiment (AEWE), Ft. Benning, Ga., were able to acquire unprecedented
levels of knowledge about their surroundings thanks to the battlefield
imaging and communications relay capabilities of Northrop Grumman
Corporation's (NYSE:NOC) Fire Scout vertical unmanned aerial system
(VUAS).

Hovering 4,000 feet above the battlefield, Fire Scout offered soldiers
both high fidelity video imagery produced by its
electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor, and assured, Internet-like
chat, file sharing and data transfers enabled by a Raytheon-produced
communications payload.

"Fire Scout's delivery of assured communications to AEWE participants
demonstrated yet another benefit of using vertical unmanned aerial
systems to support warfighters, particularly those operating in remote,
rugged territory," said Al Nikolaus, Northrop Grumman's Land-based Fire
Scout program manager.

AEWE is an annual Army exercise designed to give soldiers a look at
emerging battlefield technologies and concepts of operation. In
addition to Fire Scout's communications relay demonstration, the VUAS
was used to support cargo resupply missions and to ferry other types of
unmanned systems to troops operating in remote areas.

For the communications relay missions, Fire Scout was equipped with a
Mobile Ad hoc Interoperability Network GATEway (MAINGATE)
communications payload. Installed in a pod attached to Fire Scout, the
payload relayed communications among ground troops, allowing them to
share high quality video, voice and data communications in real time.

Northrop Grumman also fed Fire Scout's EO/IR surveillance imagery into
the MAINGATE network in real time, allowing soldiers to benefit from
the VUAS' "perch and stare" view of the AEWE battlefield.

According to Nikolaus, one of the most significant aspects of the
communications relay demo was how fast the payload was integrated on
Fire Scout and flown successfully on multiple AEWE missions: from start
to finish, the process took less than three months; installation,
check-out and first flight of the MAINGATE hardware at AEWE took just
one day.

"The success of the MAINGATE demo reinforces the maturity and
versatility of Fire Scout's modular design," said Nikolaus. "Backed up
by Northrop Grumman's expertise in unmanned systems, the system can
deliver a lot of capability to the warfighter in very short order."

Fire Scout is an autonomous, unmanned helicopter based on a Sikorsky
Aircraft commercial airframe. Equipped with a variety of EO/IR and
communications payloads, it can provide high levels of situational
awareness and precision targeting support to U.S. armed forces for more
than five hours at a time. Fire Scout can take off and land
autonomously on any aviation-capable warship, and at prepared and
unprepared landing zones in proximity to ground troops. Its ability to
operate at low ground speeds allows it to move with warfighters in the
field, and easily acquire and track targets in complex and urban
terrain. It can also perform 'dull, dirty, or dangerous' missions,
thereby protecting soldiers from harm's way. Northrop Grumman is
developing Fire Scout vertical unmanned systems for a variety of U.S.
and international military customers.

Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose
120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions
in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and
technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.


CONTACT:  Brooks McKinney, APR
          Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
          (310) 331-6610
          Mobile: (310) 864-3785
          brooks.mckinney@ngc.com