-Wind River, a world leader in embedded and mobile software, announced the U.S. Navy / Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned aircraft successfully completed its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California on February 4, 2011 at 2:09 p.m. PST for 29 minutes. Wind River's VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) is a key technology for the X-47B in the Navy's Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) program. VxWorks was chosen by Northrop Grumman as the software platform for the UCAS-D program, and by GE Aviation as the foundation for the Common Core System, the backbone of UCAS-D computers, networks and interfacing electronics and provides the primary computing environment.

The X-47B is an unmanned aircraft Northrop Grumman developed for the Navy to demonstrate that an unmanned, tailless aircraft can operate safely and autonomously from aircraft carriers and refuel in-flight. Northrop Grumman developers leveraged VxWorks to rapidly create, deploy and maintain critical applications for this unmanned aircraft. The VxWorks platform provides developers with a proven, reliable, high-performance solution necessary for building safety-critical control systems.

"The UCAS-D program is an essential step toward the future of carrier-based unmanned systems technology, and Wind River is honored to have been selected for such an ambitious military program," said Chip Downing, director of aerospace and defense at Wind River. "As evidenced by our work with Northrop Grumman, Wind River continues to be a core innovation enabler for unmanned systems with proven COTS certification products that help companies quickly bring to market highly complex systems that must undergo rigorous military and commercial safety testing and verification."

"Launching the X-47B is a major milestone for the Navy, Northrop Grumman, and Wind River, whose technology was important to its success," said Janis Pamiljans, vice president and UCAS-D program manager for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems sector.