NAVAL AIR SYSTEMS COMMAND, Patuxent River, Md. – The Navy’s new, larger MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter returned from a five-day test period aboard USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109) Dec. 19 after successfully completing its first ship-based flights off the Virginia coast.
The Fire Scout test team and Sailors aboard Dunham conducted dynamic interface testing with the MQ-8C to verify the system’s launch and recovery procedures before the system undergoes operational test next year.
“By better understanding ship operations, we will have a smoother transition into operational test,” said Capt. Jeff Dodge, Fire Scout program manager. “This exercise gives us insight into operating from an air-capable ship and will help us mitigate any risk associated with the system.”
During this underway period, the Fire Scout completed three flights and 32 takeoffs and recoveries. The data collected during these test events helped the team assess the system's performance at different combinations of wind and ship motion and get a better understanding of how the aircraft behaved around the ship, he said.
"This system has the potential to enhance the fleet's ability to conduct airborne-over the horizon searches and targeting that would expand a myriad of missions, while maintaining a conceivably small support element,” said Cmdr. Darren Dugan, commanding officer for DDG 109. “I'm excited to be part of this testing and evaluation period for the MQ-8C."
The MQ-8C Fire Scout is an upgrade to the existing “B” variant, which first deployed in 2009. With its larger airframe, the “C” can fly nearly twice as long and carry three times more payload than its predecessor.
The MQ-8C team is leveraging lessons learned from MQ-8B operations. The “B” variant has routinely flown from frigates and most recently from the littoral combat ship (LCS).
Since most of the MQ-8Cs components are identical to the “B” variant, the team has high confidence that it will operate effectively from the ship, Dodge said. The system performed “very well” during the yearlong ground-based tests in Point Mugu, California so he anticipates seamless integration with Dunham this week.
Teamed with the manned MH-60 helicopter, the MQ-8 Fire Scout extends the range and endurance of ship-based operations. It provides unique situational awareness and precision target support for the Navy.
In addition to 30 MQ-8Bs that have been delivered by Northrop Grumman, the Navy plans to procure a total of 40 MQ-8Cs to support LCS and other air-capable ships.
Point Mugu October 23, 2014 - Northrop Grumman Corporation successfully completed precision sloped landing tests Aug. 27 with the MQ-8C Fire Scout at Naval Base Ventura County, Point Mugu, in preparation for at-sea testing. MQ-8C Fire Scout has been undergoing rigorous flight testing and validation, which will culminate in the actual takeoff and landing on the deck of a Navy vessel at-sea. The MQ-8C is the company's latest variant of its successful Fire Scout unmanned aerial system, which performs intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions for the U.S. Navy. "The sloped takeoff and landing tests are designed to be as real as it gets to actually operating on a Navy ship," said Capt. Patrick Smith, Fire Scout program manager at Naval Air Systems Command. "The autonomous MQ-8C Fire Scout system is able to precisely track and understand the roll and pitch of the surface which resembles at-sea conditions." The sloped landing platform was previously used to test and certify the MQ-8B Fire Scout for ship-based operations and is now being used for the more capable MQ-8C. The MQ-8C is utilizing the same proven autonomous system for takeoff and landings as the current MQ-8B model.
"The MQ-8C Fire Scout system is performing as predicted and as previously demonstrated during Fire-X testing back in 2011," said George Vardoulakis, vice president for Medium Range Tactical Systems, Northrop Grumman. "These tests enable a validation of our autonomous system and clear the way for dynamic interface testing onboard the ship." Since its first flight Oct. 31, 2013, the MQ-8C Fire Scout has flown 219 flights and 287 hours. The most recent tests on the MQ-8C have consisted of electromagnetic testing, which assured compatibility with ship-based emitters (like radar) and an initial phase of dynamic interface testing, which looked at deck handling and communications networks. The MQ-8C's first ship-based series of flights are planned for later this year.
The first operational test of the MQ-8C Fire Scout on board the US Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is expected in about a year's time, the officer who oversees the navy's unmanned aviation programmes said on 8 April.
Rear Admiral Mathias Winter, programme executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons, said that the new variant of the Fire Scout vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle will commence shipboard tests from LCS between the end of the first quarter and the beginning of second quarter of 2015.
Manufactured by Northrop Grumman, the MQ-8C recently has been conducting initial flight tests.
The Navy has abandoned its plans to buy 17 additional Northrop Grumman Fire Scout rotary wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the next five years as part of its Fiscal Year 2015 budget submission.
The submission zeroed out purchases of the helicopter UAVs over the Future Years Defense Plan (FYPD) — the five-year planning period that extends to fiscal year 2019. In its Fiscal Year 2014 FYDP the service indicated it would buy close to 17 MQ-8C Fire Scouts from 2014 to 2018 — primarily for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) mission packages.
So far the Navy has purchased 28 of the legacy MQ-8B Fire Scouts and paid for 14 of the larger MQ-8C variants — including two demonstration airframes currently being tested by the Navy in California.
The decision to zero out the program follows an anticipated reduction in the mission packages for the LCS after Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced the cap of the current hulls at 32 from 52.
Northrop Grumman officials told USNI News, “we are working closely with the U.S. Navy to meet their current operational needs and path forward for the Fire Scout program.”
The Navy’s budget, ”deferred MQ-8 air vehicle procurements across the FYDP to better align with LCS deliveries,” said Capt. Patrick Smith, Fire Scout program manager for Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). The LCS cap will likely lead to a reduction in the original 64 mission packages planned for the program but It’s still unclear how the Navy will restructure the mission module packages in light of the caps.
Service leaders are meeting to discuss the future of the program in the coming weeks, service officials told USNI News.
The Navy had planned for 24 surface warfare (SuW) mission package for LCS that would field up to three MQ-8Bs or one MQ-8C.
MQ-8B Fire Scouts are planned to be part of the SuW mission package for this year’s upcoming deployment of USS Fort Worth(LCS-3) to Singapore.
Instead of buying new airframes the service will instead invest in improvements in the existing fleet.
Le second exemplaire du drone MQ-8C Fire Scout de Northrop Grumman a effectué son vol inaugural le 12 février sur la base navale de Ventura County en Californie. D’autres essais vont être effectués avant de lancer l’expérimentation des vols à partir de bâtiments de l’US Navy à l’été 2014. Le vol inaugural du premier exemplaire avait eu lieu le 31 octobre dernier. Depuis, le drone VTOL a effectué un total de 41 vols et 66 heures passées dans les airs. Développé à partir de la cellule d’un Bell 407, le Fire Scout est destiné aux missions ISR pour le compte de l’US Navy, qui souhaite en acquérir 30. Il devrait être opérationnel courant 2014.
San Diego November 25, 2013 – Northrop Grumman Corporation has delivered the second MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter to the U.S. Navy after completing final assembly at the company's unmanned systems center in Moss Point, Miss. The aircraft is joining the first one delivered to Naval Base Ventura County, Point Mugu, Calif., to conduct flight testing before using the system for operational missions in 2014. "Since 2006 we have conducted final assembly of the earlier MQ-8B Fire Scout aircraft from our Moss Point facility, so we have a lot of manufacturing experience there," said George Vardoulakis, vice president for medium range tactical systems, Northrop Grumman. "With the MQ-8C variant being assembled there as well, we can use the same expertise and quality processes already developed." The MQ-8C Fire Scout is the Navy's newest unmanned helicopter that can fly twice as long and carry three times more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads than the existing variant. To prepare the second MQ-8C Fire Scout for flight operations, a series of ground and flight tests will occur to validate payload integration and that communications between the ground control system and the aircraft are working properly. Including the two test aircraft, 14 new Fire Scouts are currently under contract to be built. The Navy's current plan is to purchase 30 MQ-8C Fire Scouts.
Patrick H. 's insight:
Le 1er exemplaire de ce nouveau drone-hélicoptère vient d'effectuer son 1er vol test fin octobre :
San Diego December 3, 2014 - Northrop Grumman Corporation has delivered the first operational MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter to the U.S. Navy. The system will be used by ship-based commanders to improve the Navy's intelligence-gathering capabilities.
The MQ-8C is an upgraded version of the existing MQ-8B Fire Scout using a larger airframe. It can fly nearly twice as long and carry three times more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance payloads.
"The test program will run through the summer as we expect these aircraft to be ready for operations by year's end," said George Vardoulakis, vice president for medium range tactical systems with Northrop Grumman.
The MQ-8C's first ship-board flight tests aboard the USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109) will be conducted this winter. The Navy will then assess the system for operational use.
Northrop Grumman is under contract to build 19 MQ-8C Fire Scouts, including two test aircraft. The Navy plans to purchase 70 aircraft total.
The US Navy (USN) plans to equip the Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scout rotary-winged unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with an electronic warfare (EW) capability through the development of a new external pod, the Department of Defense (DoD) disclosed on 1 May.
Under a contract listing, Northrop Grumman is being given USD10.8 million to develop and integrate the new Multi Capability Pod (MCAP) onto the MQ-8C. The MCAP will provide the UAV with "multiple electronic warfare sensors for employment in the littorals", the DOD listing said.
Work is scheduled to be completed in June 2015.
Developed from the Bell 407 manned helicopter, the MQ-8C Fire scout will provide an enhanced capability over its smaller MQ-8B namesake, which is modelled on the smaller Schweizer Aircraft model 330 helicopter.
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designers at Northrop Grumman Corp. will build five long-range unmanned helicopters for operation from destroyers and other surface warships under terms of a $43.8 million U.S. Navy contract announced this past week.
Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., are asking the Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems segment in San Diego to build five MQ-8C Fire Scout vertical take-off and landing tactical unmanned aerial vehicles (VTUAV), which are based on the manned Bell 407 helicopter from Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas.
The manned version of the Bell 407 seats seven, can carry a useful load of 2,347 pounds, flies as fast as 140 knots, and has a range of 324 nautical miles.
The MQ-8A and MQ-8B versions of the Navy Northrop Grumman Fire Scout UAV are based on the Schweizer 333 helicopter from Schweizer Aircraft Corp., a Sikorsky Aircraft company based in Horseheads, N.Y. Schweizer Aircraft now is doing business as the Sikorsky Military Completions Center (SMCC).
The MQ-8B is limited to operating for only eight to 12 hours per day of ISR coverage at a range of only 100 nautical miles, Navy officials say. To meet the longer-range requirements, Northrop Grumman experts will use the avionics developed for the MQ-8B, as well as the software and ground-control systems, on the longer-range MQ-8C based on the Bell 407.
The MQ-8C will provide the Navy with an increased range of more than 30 percent, twice the endurance, and an increased payload capacity over the existing MQ-8B variant, Northrop Grumman officials say. The unmanned systems architecture developed for the MQ-8B is re-used in the Bell 407.
The primary advantage of the MQ-8C Fire Scout over its MQ-8B and MQ-8A versions is the newest shipboard UAV has double the useful payload of its predecessors. The newest model also has a somewhat faster top speed and slightly more maximum range than previous models of the Fire Scout.
Manufacturing and assembly operations of the new Fire Scout variant are at Bell's facility in Ozark, Ala., and final assembly is Northrop Grumman's Unmanned Systems Center in Moss Point, Miss.
Patrick H. 's insight:
Une commande de 17 exemplaires avait été annulée pour 2015 et les années suivantes le mois dernier :
At 11 years old, the robot helicopter called the MQ-8 Fire Scout is a at least a preadolescent. But ever since the reconnaissance drone’s first flight in 2002, it’s had one big problem: It’s a little bit…little.
So, at the Navy’s request, manufacturer Northrop Grumman basically did a brain transplant. It put the Fire Scout’s software, appropriately modified, in a much larger helicopter. If the new adult-sized Fire Scout, designated MQ-8C, meets the Navy’s expectations, it will be able to fly about 50 percent faster, 25 percent higher, and more than twice as long than the current model, MQ-8B. That would make the C-model a much more effective scout for the fleet, which is especially important for a controversial warship with size issues of its own: the Littoral Combat Ship.
The first of the larger Fire Scouts started flying last fall. As of yesterday, Northrop now has its second MQ-8C in the air. The two robo-choppers are currently just flying out of land bases, but shipboard tests are scheduled for the summer. The MQ-8C should be able to fit aboard the Navy’s FFG-7 Perry-class frigates, which already use the smaller MQ-8B as well as the larger (and manned) SH-60 Sea Hawk. But for now, the Navy plans to start testing the MQ-8C on its big DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers.
In the long run, though, the warship program with the most at stake is the Littoral Combat Ship. Smaller, faster, cheaper, and considerably more fragile than a Perry frigate, let alone a full-sized destroyer, the LCS was designed from the start as a kind of miniature aircraft carrier, a modular mothership that could launch and control a wide variety of unmanned aircraft, mini-subs, and surface craft.
This network-of-robots concept for the future force is especially close to the heart of the incoming Deputy Secretary of Defense, LCS proponent Robert Work. But LCS fans like Work have an uphill battle. Work’s predecessor, Acting Deputy Secretary Christine Fox, has already slashed the planned buy of Littoral Combat Ships, a cut that may by now be baked into the 2015 budget and the accompanying long-term plan for 2016-2019 that are due out next month.
The Littoral Combat Ship has come in for plenty of criticism, not only within the Pentagon, but on Capitol Hill and in the thinktank world. Most of the negative attention has focused on the survivability and reliability of the ships themselves. But because LCS is meant as a mothership, the program really sinks or swims based on the performance of the drones that it can carry– drones like the now-upgraded Fire Scout.
Navy leaders are considering options to field the Northrop Grumman MQ-8C —the newest version of the Fire Scout unmanned aircraft aboard the service’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) fleet.
The service’s current plans for unmanned capabilities aboard the LCS are focused on the current MQ-8B Fire Scout, Capt. John Ailes, head of LCS mission module development for the Naval Sea Systems Command, said Tuesday.
Navy leaders anticipate the maritime surveillance aircraft to play a critical role in all three mission module packages currently under development for the LCS.
The MQ-8C Fire Scout rotary-wing surveillance aircraft could be a better fit for the LCS as newer iterations of the ship roll off the assembly line, Ailes said during a briefing at the Surface Navy Association symposium 2014 in Crystal City, Va.
The latest Fire Scout can carry larger and more complex surveillance and reconnaissance payloads, while maintaining a longer flight range, compared to the current B models, according to Ailes.
With those kinds of capabilities, “you could see in the future how that could be [possible]” to replace the Fire Scout B variants with the new C version,” he added.
That potential is prompting program officials and service leaders to run a series of recent tests and review “to see if you could” replace the B version with the C variants.
But those tests and subsequent findings could fall by the wayside, as program leaders have yet to approve a change from the B version to the C version in the LCS program of record, Ailes said Tuesday.
That said, Navy officials are pressing ahead with new rounds of trials on future iterations of Lockheed Freedom-class versions of the LCS, to test its ability to support the Fire Scout, regardless of which version may be fielded.
Program officials have already integrated the B variant into the ship’s surface warfare (SUW), mine countermeasure and sub hunting mission modules, each taking advantage of the unmanned aircraft’s sensor and imagery capabilities.
An updated version of the ship’s surface warfare package, including the Fire Scout B, is set to undergo sea trials aboard USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) in March.
The MQ-8Bs has undergone several test deployments, primarily with Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates (FFG-7) as part of counterdrugs operations in U.S. Southern Command.
The Navy began test flights with the MQ-8C in November. The airframe is based on a stock Bell 407 and heavily modified in a Northrop facility in Alabama.
Current MQ-8Bs have a maximum speed of 100 kts with a range of 618 nautical miles and an eight-hour endurance time.
The MQ-8C variant will extend the time in the air to twelve hours, a there-and-back range of about 1,200 nautical miles and the ability to conduct an orbit around a ship of up to 150 nautical miles.
The MQ-8C Fire Scout — an unmanned helicopter that’s larger and faster than the MQ-8Bs already in use by the Navy — made its first flight Thursday at Naval Base Ventura County, Calif., staying airborne for seven minutes.
The Fire Scout took off just after noon Pacific time, according to a Naval Air Systems Command news release, flying “in restricted airspace to validate the autonomous control systems.” In a second flight Thursday afternoon, the aircraft flew in a pattern above the Point Mugu airfield, reaching an altitude of 500 feet, according to the release.
“It is a big accomplishment for the integrated government and industry team to fly this air vehicle for the first time,” Capt. Patrick Smith, Fire Scout program manager at Naval Air Systems Command, said in the release.
The MQ-8C is about 10 feet longer than the 31.7-foot B variant and can fly 140 knots, 30 faster than the smaller aircraft. It can stay in the air longer — 11 to 14 hours, compared with four to five hours for the smaller variant — and has an internal payload capacity of 1,000 pounds, 400 more than the 8B.
“The C will have approximately twice the capability of the B — time on station, payloads — and provides for additional growth, including radar,” Smith said in an interview with Defense News earlier this year.
The larger helicopter won’t replace the MQ-8B — both will continue to be used in the fleet. The larger Fire Scout’s initial shipboard tests will be done on destroyers, according to the release, but future missions could involve deployments aboard littoral combat ships.
It’s expected to join the fleet by 2016, but it could deploy as soon as next year, the release said.
The smaller Fire Scout has been used for surveillance missions over Afghanistan and anti-piracy missions off the African coast. One crashed over Libya in 2011. It’s now operating from the frigate Samuel B. Roberts, from which it set a flight-hour record of 333 hours in June.
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