Northrop Grumman was awarded a $1.16 billion contract from the U.S. Navy to develop the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS UAS), using the company’s RQ-4N platform. The contract is to develop a persistent maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data collection and dissemination capability, the military said. "This announcement represents the Navy’s largest investment in unmanned aircraft systems to date. The extraordinary efforts leading to this announcement have helped the BAMS UAS program begin to develop a persistent ISR capability never before available to the fleet," said Capt. Bob Dishman, program manager for the BAMS UAS program.