Northrop Grumman's nine-lived UAV, the MQ-8B Fire Scout, is still moving towards an operational US Army career despite the demise of the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, where it was to serve as the brigade-level Class IV UAV.
Northrop Grumman is currently operating two Fire Scouts - P-6 and P-7 - which were part of the US Army's initial batch of aircraft, which have been stored at the company's Moss Point, Mississippi, facility while the Army has tried to define their role within FCS. (In the 2010 budget, there's money to bring four aircraft to the flight test stage.) In January/February of 2010, P-7 is due to take part in the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment (AEWE) at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Northrop Grumman
The main thrust of Fire Scout's role in AEWE will be reconnaissance and targeting, but one mission will demonstrate resupply (including delivering an EyeDrive unmanned ground vehicle) and the other will use the UAV to land a QinetiQ/Foster-Miller Dragon Runner UGV. The UAV will then act as a relay, letting a controller miles away use the Dragon Runner to emplace two BAE-designed unattended sensor packages. This apparently complex process allows the sensors to be positioned accurately and unobtrusively.
Both the resupply and UGV missions support Northrop Grumman's case that a VTOL UAV has unique attributes that justify its greater size compared with a fixed-wing aircraft. "We get compared with Shadow and its upgrades," says Northrop Grumman Army Fire Scout business development manager Mike Howell, "and that's valid if you look at a narrow set of missions. But you can't do resupply."
The company is also working on a package of performance improvements to Fire Scout. Redesigned rotor blades are expected to boost endurance by up to an hour, and the company wants to incorporate the new Rolls-Royce RR500 engine, providing another 70 hp and increasing hot-and-high takeoff weight by 237 lb - equivalent to another 1.8 hours in the air.
The Marines were offered the Fire Scout for their resupply demo and went with the K-Max and A160T - I think the Fire Scout's payload was a bit too small
yeah they're in danger of being overtaken by events. resupply of units is becoming a BIG issue...especially units under fire. if the K-Max can demonstrate that ability ....even once then they're in business for the next decade for both the Army and Marines and Northrop will be first but last again.
The Fire Scout's problem is that it just doesn't have the growth capability. It was a clever offering for the original USN VTUAV requirement, prioritizing system maturity over the Eagle Eye's tiltrotor capabilities, but the downside to its 1960s heritage airframe is that it has nowhere to go. NG has been touting "6-8 hours endurance" for years, talking up various development paths such as new blades, sponsons and recuperators, but it has failed to achieve what the A160T is already doing (and much more).
Given the numbers of VUAS that the Army and Navy are talking about, it's easy to understand why they are once again reconsidering whether the MQ-8B really is suitable for 25-30 years of use. It may be that the Fire Scout simply becomes the CONOPS training system for a more advanced platform offering superior mission performance.
Given the numbers of VUAS that the Army and Navy are talking about, it's easy to understand why they are once again reconsidering whether the MQ-8B really is suitable for 25-30 years of use. It may be that the Fire Scout simply becomes the CONOPS training system for a more advanced platform offering superior mission performance.