Northrop Grumman Corp., its Northrop Grumman Space and Mission Systems Corp. subsidiary, and its predecessor, TRW Inc., agreed to pay $325 million to settle False Claims Act allegations that Northrop and TRW provided and billed the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) for defective microelectronic parts known as Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBTs) manufactured by TRW from 1992 to 2002. (Northrop Grumman acquired TRW in 2002). As a result, the government alleged that Northrop and TRW integrated into NRO satellite equipment certain defective HBTs. The government also claimed that Northrop and TRW made misrepresentations about and concealed certain material facts regarding the reliability of the HBTs. The settlement resolved a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2002 by Robert Ferro, an employee of the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research lab.