Northrop Grumman has won a $15 million contract to supply six ship sets of machinery control and monitoring systems for the U.K.'s Type 45 "D" Class destroyer for the Royal Navy. The contract has been awarded by the Type 45 prime contractor BAE SYSTEMS Electronics, and includes options for life-cycle support, including maintenance, repair, spares management, equipment upgrades and training. The PMS is a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) system that provides machinery control and surveillance for the ships' main engines, auxiliaries and other systems, as well as damage surveillance and control functions.

The primary function of the PMS is to enable shipboard personnel to access vital information on the status of platform systems and to safely control them from a common interface. The open architecture design of the PMS allows critical information to be gathered from the combat system as well as the integrated communications system and display it on the PMS workstations. The integration of this data provides accurate and consistent information across the functional boundaries of the ship, a capability that is vital to the crew of a modern warship.

Marine Systems, a Northrop Grumman company, is working closely with Rockwell Automation to provide the COTS-based solution. The PMS contract further enhances Northrop Grumman's work on the Type 45's engine systems. In November 2000, a team led by Northrop Grumman and Rolls-Royce was selected to provide the marine gas turbines for the Type 45 Destroyer. Unlike conventional marine gas turbine engines, the WR-21 features a recuperator downstream of the power turbine that recovers energy from the exhaust gas to increase fuel efficiency. This translates into extended ship range for a given fuel capacity, more unrefueled time on-station, or reduced fuel storage requirements for a given range. This can provide more space for additional weapons payloads.