One of the featured demonstrations was the U.S. Army's experimental exercise, Project Convergence 2022, where Hatchet was rapidly integrated with an AeroVironment Jump 20 UAS. The Naval Surface Warfare Center's Battle Management System was used to facilitate aircraft safety and stores communication.
Over the last six months, our Hatchet miniature strike munition underwent multiple live fire exercises.
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Discover how Hatchet showcases operational capability & integration maturation: https://t.co/P5CcuTn3qh pic.twitter.com/nMfptwxu0d
Joe Esler, business development for Northrop Grumman, said that the demonstrations move Hatchet one step closer to field deployment and operational readiness. The compressed carriage design of Hatchet provides multiple weapon loadouts without adversely affecting aircraft endurance
“By arming the smaller, organic unmanned systems, the soldiers on the ground become less reliant on the larger, low density, high demand aircraft assets to accomplish their mission,” said Esler. “As we have seen in Ukraine, these smaller, weaponized UAS systems have been proven very effective on the battlefield.”
Hatchet is a miniature lightweight, precision-guided munition that achieves high lethality by adaptively coupling its fragmenting warhead effects with an innovative terminal guidance design. When dropped from a Group-3 UAS on both stationary and moving targets, Hatchet's accuracy to target was consistently less than two meters. The size, accuracy, and lethality of Hatchet is ideal for use on all aircraft, but specifically enhances unmanned aircraft missions.
Source: Northrop Grumman
