Aerial Refuelling Specialist Cobham Chosen for Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Refuelling Demo Program

DAVENPORT, Iowa US — Northrop Grumman recently announced the selection of Cobham Mission Equipment as a major subcontractor for the KQ-X program. This
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) program will demonstrate autonomous aerial refuelling between two unmanned NASA Global Hawk
aircraft. Cobham Mission Equipment will be providing the hose and drogue refuelling system in addition to engineering support and aerial refuelling expertise.
Iain Gibson, Vice President of Cobham Mission Equipment, said “Cobham is proud to be a part of the Northrop Grumman team supporting this ground breaking DARPA program that further advances leading edge aerial refuelling capability”.

About Cobham
Cobham’s products and services have been at the heart of sophisticated military and
civil systems for more than 75 years, keeping people safe, improving communications,
and enhancing the capability of land, sea, air and space platforms. The Company has
four divisions employing more than 12,000 people on five continents, with customers and partners in over 100 countries and annual revenue of some £1.9bn / US$3 billion.

About Cobham Mission Equipment

Cobham Mission Equipment provides a ‘wingtip to wingtip’ capability offering a comprehensive range of weapons carriage and release equipment including missile launchers, cryogenic cooling for missile seekers, pneumatic missile fin actuation and wing store carriers, bomb ejection, defensive aids, chaff and flare systems. The company is also the world market leader for air-to-air refuelling, providing fourth generation ‘nose to tail’ solutions from the cockpit of the donor aircraft to the tail of the receiver platform. More than 1,000 systems have been delivered for buddy-buddy refuelling, tactical and strategic tanking for fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, with UAV development well advanced.

About Northrop Grumman
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.