The U.S. Air Force has chosen Northrop Grumman Corporation’s RainDrop as its near-term standard precise positioning tool to meet warfighters’ time-sensitive targeting requirements and to provide better capability from commander-in-chief to unit level operations.
The selection was based on performance, functionality, current fielding, training availability, user familiarity and the potential for near-term improvement to satisfy time-sensitive targeting requirements.
Produced by the company’s Integrated Systems sector, RainDrop is the first commercial-off-the-shelf, operator-friendly, PC-based, stereo imagery exploitation tool for precise coordinate extraction.
Among its capabilities, RainDrop lets operators “view” target areas with three-dimensional imagery and produces weapon-planning target coordinates that can guide precision-guided munitions.
“We invested our internal research and development funds to develop RainDrop to meet the warfighter requirements for coordinate-seeking weapons. It has turned out to be a superlative investment for ourselves and our customers,” says Lawrence Schadegg, president of the PRB Systems unit of Integrated Systems’ Airborne Early Warning and Electronic Warfare Systems business area. “We are proud of this selection by the Air Force.”
RainDrop, in service only since 1998, has proven itself operationally. It was first used to support Air Force units, including the B-2 with its Joint Direct Attack Munition weapon, in Operation Allied Force.
For Operation Enduring Freedom, RainDrop has been a workhorse for the “targeteers,” providing the majority of ground coordinates used for precision-guided weapons. There are over 750 RainDrop systems fielded by the Defense Department and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.
A fielding plan is being developed to ensure that RainDrop is available to any Air Force unit requiring a precise positioning capability. The Air Force will begin fielding RainDrop to its Distributed Common Ground System core locations later this year.
