Northrop Grumman's LEMV Program Completes Critical Design Review

Fourth Major Milestone Completed; Next Major Milestone is Hull Inflation

MELBOURNE, Florida, BETHPAGE, New York and LONDON, February 1, 2011 - Six months after signing the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle
(LEMV) agreement with the U.S. Army to build three airships with 21-day
persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability,
Northrop Grumman's (NYSE: NOC) LEMV program team has completed its Critical
Design Review (CDR). This is the fourth major milestone achieved by the
program since contract award.

"The entire U.S. Army/Northrop Grumman LEMV industry team has done an
outstanding job working through a very aggressive development schedule to
achieve all of these important milestones. The CDR provided an in-depth
review of the complete system design of the program giving us the opportunity
to assess where we are in our development and air vehicle production. It went
very well," said Alan Metzger, Northrop Grumman vice president and integrated
program team leader of LEMV and airship programs. "The entire team has been
collaborating and remains very focused on meeting our objective of delivering
this powerful capability into the hands of our combat commanders as soon as
possible."

Artwork accompanying this release is available at
media.globenewswire.com/noc/mediagallery.html?pkgid=8698

"There are three upcoming major milestones in the next 10 months,"
Metzger said, "We'll have hull inflation in the spring and first flight of
the airship test article by mid-to-late summer. Upon completion of the
development ground and flight testing phase, we expect to transition to a
government facility and conduct our final acceptance long endurance flight
just before year's end. In early 2012, LEMV will participate in an Army Joint
Military Utility Assessment in an operational environment," he added. "As you
can imagine, it's a very aggressive schedule to deliver from
concept-to-combat in this time period."

Under the June 2010 agreement, awarded by the U.S. Army Space and Missile
Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command, Northrop Grumman will design,
develop and test a long-duration hybrid airship system all within an 18-month
time period.

"The power of the LEMV system is that its persistent surveillance
capability is built around Northrop Grumman's open architecture design, which
provides plug-and-play payload capability to the warfighter and room for
mission growth," Metzger said. "The system rapidly accommodates
next-generation sensors as emerging field requirements dictate and will
provide increased operational utility to battlefield commanders. Today, our
system readily integrates into the Army's existing Universal Ground Control
Station and Deployable Common Ground System command centers and ground troops
in forward operating bases.

"Beyond the value of seamless interoperability, the LEMV system provides
a high level of fuel efficiency to the user community-a crucial part of life
cycle logistics and support in theatre. While LEMV is longer than a football
field and taller than a seven-story building, it utilizes approximately 3,500
gallons of fuel for the air vehicle to remain aloft for a 21-day period of
service, that's approximately $11,000 at commercial prices," Metzger added.

Northrop Grumman's industry team includes Hybrid Air Vehicles, Ltd. of
the United Kingdom, Warwick Mills, ILC Dover, AAI Corporation, SAIC and a
team of technology leaders from 18 U.S. states and three countries. In
addition to leading the program, Northrop Grumman leads the system
integration, and flight and ground control operations for the unmanned
vehicle to safely take off and land in worldwide operations.

Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose
120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in
aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical
services to government and commercial customers worldwide. Please visit
www.northropgrumman.com for more information.

Dianne Baumert-Moyik, +1-516-346-2142, dianne.baumert-moyik at ngc.com, or Ken Beedle (London), +44-(0)-207-747-1910, Mobile, +44-(0)-7787-174092, ken.beedle at euro.ngc.com, both of Northrop Grumman Corporation