Mercury Computer Systems will provide scalable multicomputing products and services for the US Navy broad area maritime surveillance (BAMS) programme under a contract awarded by Northrop Grumman.

Under the $4.7m contract, the company will provide PowerStream 7000 multicomputers for the BAMS unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to process the synthetic aperture radar images.

The BAMS UAS is a multimission maritime aircraft specifically designed to support a range of all-weather maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

Mercury worldwide sales vice-president Brian Hoerl said the PowerStream multicomputers combined the power of FPGA processors with massive input / output and real-time reconfiguration to deliver enhanced performance and reliability for applications.