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NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER, Maryland, Sept 23 (Reuters) - I mproved reliability of Northrop Grumman Corp's unmanned MQ-4C Triton spy plane means the U.S. Navy may buy fewer of the drones than the 68 it now has on order, a senior navy official said on Tuesday, a move which may result in lower revenues for the planemaker.

The Navy's goal is to have 20 of the huge drones available at any given time to use for five continuous "orbits" of maritime surveillance. It takes four planes to make up one orbit.

Rising reliability rates mean the Navy may not need as many of the high-altitude aircraft as first thought, said Captain Jim Hoke, who runs the Triton program for the Navy.

Northrop had no immediate comment on the matter.

Hoke said he was mindful of tough budget pressures facing the Navy and also had a team looking for other ways to reduce the cost of building and operating the Triton unmanned system.

The overall development program is slated to cost about $3 billion, Hoke said. The plane's design was based on the unmanned Global Hawk plane that Northrop builds for the Air Force, but the two planes have only about 20-30 percent in common, Hoke said.

The Navy aims to start early operational use of two Triton aircraft by the end of 2017, with the formal "initial operational capability" to follow about six months later when two additional aircraft are delivered. The date slipped due to budget cuts that slowed Northrop's production, Hoke said.

Each aircraft now costs about $100 million, but Hoke said the Navy hoped to drive the cost down by finding more efficient ways to build the planes in coming years.

Hoke said all new weapons programs were vulnerable during lean budget times, but demand for maritime surveillance remained strong. He said the BAMS-D demonstration aircraft that preceded Triton has been used in the Middle East for six years.

The Navy expects to award Northrop a small contract to buy certain components for the first low-production aircraft once the fiscal 2015 budget is approved, Hoke said. He said the number of aircraft in that first batch of orders would be determined as part of the fiscal 2016 budget deliberations.

The first of three Triton planes arrived at the base in southern Maryland on Thursday after completing its longest flight ever, a 3,000-mile, 11-hour journey from California.

Hoke said two more aircraft would arrive at the base in coming weeks. The planes are due to conduct about 2,000 hours of flight testing before it enters service in 2017. The second plane will have its first flight in California this week, Hoke said.

Hoke said he hoped to resume work on an Exelis Inc system that will allow the airplane to "sense and avoid" other aircraft before the end of the year, when he is due to retire.

The Navy halted work on the system last year after running into technical issues, and has been working closely with prime contractor Northrop to find a way to fix the problem.

Northrop's deputy Triton program manager Tim Kesecker said the company had pulled in experts from other divisions, and he was upbeat that agreement would be reached soon.

By Captain Jim Hoke
Triton UAS Program Manager

This week, for the first time, we will fly our unmanned MQ-4C Triton cross-country to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, where the “future of naval aviation begins.”

For months, our team, comprised of military, civilian and contractor personnel, has been doing a phenomenal job making sure every detail is in place for this historic day.

As a program manager, it is an extraordinary opportunity to see the team’s hard work come to fruition. Last year, I had the privilege of watching Triton’s first flight. Since then, I’ve observed tremendous success with our initial envelope expansion flight tests and now I’m anticipating its landing here shortly.

For me, my connection to this team and program goes well beyond my three years as program manager.  In January 2006, I was serving as the final commodore at Wing FIVE in Brunswick, Maine. During that time, Wing FIVE executed the first-ever operational deployment of the Navy’s Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration Unmanned Aircraft System, now known as BAMS-Demonstrator (BAMS-D). While providing critical information to warfare commanders, BAMS-D also provided critical lessons learned for a future unmanned platform, then named BAMS. At the time, I didn’t anticipate the stake I’d have in the program someday.

Now, finally five years later, here I am getting ready for the arrival of that ‘future system’, now formally named Triton. I will be eagerly waiting the MQ-4C take off from Northrop Grumman’s California facility. As it makes its way across the country, flying high at altitudes in excess of 50,000 feet while passing through the southern U.S. border, the Gulf of Mexico, across Florida and up the Atlantic Coast and Chesapeake Bay, we will monitor and control the flight from our Navy System Integration Lab here in Pax River. In the early hours of the morning, our team will watch it land on the runway and taxi into its new hangar for the first time.

Triton’s arrival to Pax River marks more than a key milestone on the path to initial operational capability; it represents the tireless work and dedication of a collection of individuals with a common goal in mind: critical capability development and delivery to the warfighter. Teamed with its manned-capability counterpart, the P-8A, Triton will be a key component of the Navy’s family of systems to achieve maritime domain awareness.