Fire Scout To Gather Intel, Hunt Pirates

The U.S. Navy’s Fire Scout will deepen its operational experience considerably both on land and at sea this year as the unmanned rotorcraft begins anti-piracy missions in the Middle East and intelligence-collection for troops in Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan deployment, including three aircraft and two ground control stations, is planned for early in the third quarter of fiscal 2011 to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) to troops. Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the MQ-8 Fire Scout, will operate and maintain the system in theater under the guidance of Navy officers, says Victor Chen, a spokesman for Naval Air Systems Command, which manages the $2.6 billion program. A basing decision for the rotorcraft there is expected in the next couple of weeks.

The Pentagon has called many new ISR systems into service earlier than planned to support an insatiable need for intelligence in the fight against insurgents and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Fire Scout carries the Brite Star II electro-optical/infrared payload, which can provide much-desired full-motion videos to soldiers, says John Van­Brabant, Northrop Grumman’s maritime business development manager.

Meanwhile, two Fire Scouts are deployed onboard the U.S. frigate Halyburton in Southwest Asia. Also on the frigate will be a single MH-60. Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, director of ISR for the Navy staff, says a Fire Scout was credited with a humanitarian save last week, when it spotted a wayward boat and hovered while help was en route.

Though the Fire Scout system has yet to execute its operational evaluation (opeval) phase, Navy officials opted to deploy it on the Halyburton to provide ISR and “support anti-piracy escort of merchant shipping” in that region, Chen says. This will likely involve escorting ships off the coast of Somalia, in the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean, where there has been a sharp uptick in pirate attacks.

The Halyburton sailed to the region in early January.

Officials delayed the opeval, planned for last fall, because “not all testing was completed and verified during the technical evaluation process prior to the deployment,” Chen says. Complicating last year’s tight schedule was an incident involving a lost communications link that resulted in an MQ-8 cruising into restricted airspace outside of Washington (AW&ST, Sept. 6, 2010, p. 14). Officials determined a fix for the problem and Fire Scout returned to flight in late September after nearly two months without flight trials leading up to opeval.  

Navy officials now plan to conduct opeval as early as October, in the first quarter of fiscal 2012.

Once opeval flights are complete, the Navy will craft a formal report to determine whether Fire Scout is suitable and effective for its mission. If so, a full-rate production decision is likely to follow.

Eleven aircraft have been delivered to the Navy, and 19 are on contract through fiscal 2011. The Navy plans to buy 168 Fire Scouts and eventually deploy them on its new Littoral Combat Ships.