Striving to differentiate itself from rivals, Northrop Grumman Corp. is taking the contrarian step of forging an exclusive partnership with Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. to propose lighter, more-flexible spy satellites to the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The project, which was code-named “Trinidad” during development and which is expected to be announced today at a space conference here, reflects Northrop’s drive to move beyond being primarily a supplier of subsystems for government space programs into the more influential and potentially more profitable role as a prime contractor.

The Los Angeles company proposes to buy and modify several Israeli-built, high-resolution spy satellites, each costing less than $200 million. That is a fraction of what a larger, more complex U.S. satellite would cost. Initially, the satellites would be deployed in low Earth orbit as a stand-alone system.

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