Northrop Grumman has successfully completed the critical design review (CDR) phase of the US Navy’s WSN-12 inertial sensor module.

The company will now commence the manufacture of ten pre-production units of the WSN-12 inertial navigation system sensor.

Northrop Grumman Maritime Systems vice-president Todd Leavitt said: “Completion of this CDR keeps this programme on track to deliver exceptional navigation accuracy to the fleet.

“The WSN-12 Inertial Sensor Module provides technology that enables improvements to navigation accuracy and reliability, benefiting all systems that depend upon it.”

“As a primary subsystem of the WSN-12, the module features inertial sensors, supporting electromechanical equipment, and software to compute the navigation solution.”

The WSN-12 system has been designed to serve as the main shipboard inertial navigation system for most of the US Navy combatant vessels and will be integrated on to all DDG, CG, CVN and SSN class vessels.



It is used to measure and compute navigation data, in addition to providing the information to all users.

US Naval Sea Systems Command Integrated Warfare Systems 6.0 captain Jon Garcia said: “Northrop Grumman has met or exceeded objectives in all aspects of the sensor design and was able to demonstrate performance in the testing of the engineering development models.

“We are looking forward to successful integration testing this year and receiving the sensor pre-production units next year.”

As a primary subsystem of the WSN-12, the module features inertial sensors, supporting electromechanical equipment, and software to compute the navigation solution.

The WSN-12 module has been designed to replace the US Navy’s WSN-7 inertial navigation system under the service’s Inertial Navigation System Replacement programme.

In May 2016, Northrop Grumman successfully completed the preliminary design review for the WSN-12.