The Army is considering sending a revolutionary new kind of unmanned aerial vehicle to Iraq that can hover at 20,000 feet over the battlefield for more than eight hours, transmitting infrared and optical imagery to commanders on the ground.
The MQ-8B Fire Scout tactical unmanned aerial vehicle system — which only a few years ago seemed all but dead — is one system Army Vice-Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody requested this summer as a possible answer to an urgent battlefield need for unmanned surveillance in Iraq.
Officials with Fire Scout manufacturer Northrop Grumman told Military.com the Army could make a decision on whether to field the vertical take-off and landing drone by the end of August.
If all goes according to plan, the company could field as many as eight MQ-8Bs to units in Iraq by mid-2008.
“We want to get the Army to fly the Fire Scout as early as possible,” said Rick Ludwig, Northrop Grumman’s director of business development for UAV systems.
The Army is interested in technology like the Fire Scout — which is based on the manned Schweizer 333 helicopter — for its Future Combat Systems Class IV UAV, one of the few drone systems to survive major Army budget cuts in next year’s Defense appropriations request.
While the Navy is forging ahead on a ship-board version of the Fire Scout, the Army has yet to decide on some of the critical hardware and software configurations for the FCS version, Ludwig said.
The Fire Scout was originally intended to replace the Marine Corps RQ-2A Pioneer surveillance drone but was shelved in 2002 in favor of the RQ-7B Shadow.
The Navy breathed new life into the Fire Scout program in 2004 to augment its fleet of SH-60 Sea Hawks on future surface ships. The Army began looking at the MQ-8 in 2003 for its FCS drone fleet.
According to Joe Emerson, Northrop Grumman’s FCS drone program manager, the Army wants its FCS-capable Fire Scout to have aerial mine detection capability and tactical signals intelligence hardware.
An Iraq deployment in the near term, however, would include infrared sensors and electro-optical cameras to give commanders a birds-eye view of the battlefield. The main sticking point for the Army version remains which flight control system the service wants to use for the drone, Ludwig added.
“They still have to decide what they want in it,” he said.
The Navy is on track to field the Fire Scout in the anti-mine, anti-sub and intelligence gathering configurations in 2009 aboard Littoral Combat Ships, Ludwig said. Northrop Grumman is also working on ways to arm the drone with anti-ship munitions, including a variation of the brilliant anti-armor munition, which can orbit autonomously in search of a target after launch.
– Christian
This could be set up like the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter that congress & the Pentagon seem to have a hard time approving.It could also be controlled by one of the pilots in an Apache Helicopter.This is a good idea & I wonder why it took so long to get implemented? It can’t be old guard resistance because they can’t seem to get the ARH up & running either.I have a conspiracy theory about this but I don’t want to get banned.
Will it be cleared to carry ordnance in Iraq? I didn’t see any mention in the article.
Rick,
Though the Fire Scout has been tested to fire ordnance already, my understanding is that there are no plans to arm it for the Iraq deployment. But, that said, I suppose anything is possible.
ON january 5, 2007 I sent an email proposal of a new Irag war stragedy to President Bush of deploying ScanEagle mini-drones by the thousands for saturation surveillance and reconnaissance of battlefield regions in Irag and to also aid the civil war situation there. Squadrons of these drones can be deployed to act like large helicopter drones capable of being hovering surveillance aircraft but deployed much more efficiently by having radial arms of lines of ScanEagle Mini-drones drones flying coaxially around a common fixed axis point and in this way can act to be saturation surveilance/reconnaisssance aircraft that can blanket cover hundreds and even thousands of square miles of Irag topograhy of battlefield regions and also many square miles of city and countryside regions of Irag as seeing eyes to spot the enemy when for instance planting roadside bombs; and these ScanEagle Drones can even manage the Irag civil war fighting by spotting bands of civil war killer squads roaming the streets of Irag cities murdering hundreds of innocent civilians nightly which these murderous killer groups consider their foes for political dominance establishment of power in Irag. Rotating radial arms of hundreds or even thousands of ScanEagle Mini-drones can quickly turn the course of the Irag war for America to win because these said ScanEagle mini-drones deployed as outlined here will make the previously invisible enemy now visible by such widespread blanket saturation surveillance/reconnaisssance effiency to now see what the enemy is up to and getting better at it with each days experience of logging the odd tracks of the enemy that can be done much more effeciently than that of a few large helicopter drones ever could. Also because the long radial arms of the circular flight of many hundreds of mini-drones can as squadron groups also immediately mass drift to any 360 dregree course of flight necessary while also having the capability of instantly expanding or contracting the drones radial flight arms inward and downward to more densely cover a ground battle site with heavily condensed firepower, or upward and outward to immediately have a much more broad coverage of ground surveillance and reconnaissance when required to aid our ground troops. Also too, a large helicopter drone requires much more fuel to stay aloft and only has a flight time of 9 hours whereas ScanEagles require much less fuel and have a flight time of 17 hours. And 20 or more mini-drone ScanEagles can be purchased at the cost of a single large helicopter drone. Therefor the loss by gunfire of one ScanEagle is much more affordable and makes little difference to operation of a squadron of a hundred or more ScanEagles than does the loss and of one Large helicopter drone leaving the Irag sky empty of surveillance and firepower for our ground troops. I hope and pray that the right people see this message who can make the decision choice to put ScanEagles into the skies of Irag.
Any, ANY tool that can end this war and get our troops out victoriously is ok with me. I am incensed by our leaders in the house dragging their feet at every turn wanting to lose. I see this country as a country of winners and a loss is not acceptable. Our war fighters are doing their jobs now it’s time for the rest of the elected vagabonds not on board to get on. America, love it or leave it!
Semper Fi.
I really like the idea of surveillance saturation. If you have eyes on your convoy routes you know when someone is digging on the road. I just wonder how possible it is to watch miles and miles of road but if they could it would save lives. I guess something like this could fly routes and try to set off IEDs with cell phone signals or walkie talkie signals safely from hundreds of feet in the air.
I am unsure what this technology is going to offer that the existing winged, unmanned surveillance technology already does.
I understand why the Navy is interested, they can run many of these off of small and medium ships for anti-sub warfare and coastal reconnaissance.
The Marines (and Seals) could use them for overhead eyes while performing coastal missions.
I just think the Army is wasting their time on this one.
Any, ANY tool that can end this war and get our troops out victoriously is ok with me. I am incensed by our leaders in the house dragging their feet at every turn wanting to lose. I see this country as a Tiffany jwelery country of winners and a loss is not acceptable. Our war fighters are doing their jobs now it’s time for the rest of the elected vagabonds not on board to get on. America, love it or leave it!
Semper Fi.