Home Air US Air Force’s EGI-M GPS/INS upgrade program passes critical design review

US Air Force’s EGI-M GPS/INS upgrade program passes critical design review

F-22
The F-22 is one of the lead platforms for EGI-M integration. Photo: US Air Force

Northrop Grumman announced it has completed the critical design review (CDR) for the US Air Force’s embedded global positioning system (GPS)/inertial navigation system (INS) modernization program.

Produced by Northrop Grumman and Honeywell, EGI combines a GPS receiver card with an INS for aircraft navigation.

The systems are now being modernized under the EGI-M program, which aims to enable older GPS receivers to securely transmit new military signals for space (M-code) transmissions that are more resistant to jamming. The platforms in focus of the program are the US Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye and the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor aircraft, but the systems are scalable to a range of platforms.

“The completion of this milestone is a key step in bringing necessary navigation capability upgrades to our warfighters,” said Brandon White, vice president, navigation and positioning systems, Northrop Grumman. “With its open architecture and government ownership of the key internal interfaces, EGI-M’s next generation navigation solution allows the government to quickly insert emerging capabilities from 3rd parties while maintaining cyber security and airworthiness.”

EGI-M provides airborne navigation capabilities with an open architecture that enables rapid responses to future threats. In addition to new M-Code capable GPS receivers, the fully modernized system provides interoperability with civil controlled air space, and implements a new resilient time capability.

Northrop Grumman’s modular platform interface design enables backwards compatibility with existing platform footprint and interfaces (A-Kits), allowing current platforms to easily integrate and deploy the EGI-M solution.

Northrop Grumman has been on contract for the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of EGI-M since November 2018. The CDR milestone marks the completion of detailed hardware and software design of the EGI-M product line.