Drone Copter Flops Half Its Missions; Navy Still Wants More

[Feuer Frei!]

The Navy absolutely loves its robotic helicopter. In Latin American waters, the copter hovers above suspected drug smugglers to alert Navy ships about illicit cargo. The Pentagon is dead set on purchasing way more of them. Only one problem: the copter isn***8217;t that hot at what***8217;s supposed to be its primary task: surveillance. During a recent tour on U.S.S. Halyburton, the Fire Scout robocopter only managed to complete 54 percent of its missions. Northrop Grumman***8217;s MQ-8B Fire Scout is a spy drone that can lift off from a ship***8217;s deck. Its modular suite of cameras, sensors and radar allow the Navy to customize it to collect the intelligence that sailors want relayed back to station. Though it took a long time to find its purpose, the Fire Scout***8217;s ability to take off and land on a moving ship make it undeniably attractive to the Navy, though it***8217;s not cheap: each copter costs $9 million. (A Predator costs $20 million for four planes, a ground control station and a satellite link.)
But Fire Scout doesn***8217;t make any sense if it can***8217;t get its intelligence back to the ship ASAP. And that***8217;s the problem, according to the Pentagon***8217;s testing chief.
The Fire Scout can***8217;t be trusted to ***8220;provide time-sensitive support to ground forces,***8221; assessed Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department***8217;s director of test and evaluation, in a June 24 report obtained by InsideDefense. Its data links are ***8220;fragile.***8221; Launches get delayed because of the time it takes to get the Fire Scout talking to the ground control station. In other words, if you use the Fire Scout for intel, get ready to wait***8230; and wait***8230; and wait for your imagery.


Yet the Navy is stuck on the Fire Scout. It asked Congress this year to increase funding by $46 million and requested to nearly double its purchases to 57 of the copters. It sent Fire Scouts to Afghanistan to hunt for homemade bombs. The next big idea is to send Fire Scouts out with SEALs ***8212; who already have access to a different kind of spy drone.
What***8217;s more, Northrop is already looking to upgrade the drone to the Fire-X, which will increase the copter***8217;s flight time, payload and speed. Only one problem there: ***8220;97 percent of its software is rehosted***8221; on the Fire-X, Northrop***8217;s George Vardoulakis boasted at a Navy confab in April. After Gilmore***8217;s report, that sounds more like a liability than a virtue.


SOURCE


There you go, people of the US, there's another way to save money!
Stop buying crap gear!

[Platapus]

Sounds like Bride of DASH

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrodyne_QH-50_DASH

[TLAM Strike]

From another wired article linked to in that article:

The Fire Scout unmanned attack copter isn’t supposed to be heading into battle until 2012, at the earliest.

*Checks watch*

Soooo... its up to a year and a half early on its combat deployment? In other words its still in development? In other words it is undergoing an operational evaluation to find these problems!!

Seriously, communications problems on its first deployments? the USAF has lost 70 Predators since 1995 and yet the program continued, and advanced to the 2nd generation of the aircraft and its now quite possibly the most important single platform in the USAF! The Fire Scout is most likely the Navy's Predator.

Wired STFU, go back to silicon valley and stay out of the E Ring.

Oh and in other news the PLAN has its own ship based drone now...

[Feuer Frei!]

Well, maybe the question should go to the Senate, the Army and Northrop.
Wired is just reporting it. Were the missions live or just practice runs? If live, i can understand wired's queries.
If not then the article is a little unfair. They should realise that it's not combat-ready and that is not surprising.
I fear the prior is infact the case.
They even linked to the 'not ready 'till 2012' article. To be fair.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Were the missions live or just practice runs?

They are both, its an "Operational Evaluation". Basically the Navy is taking an experimental piece of kit out in the field and seeing where the bugs are at under "life fire" conditions. Its happens all the time.

@ Steve: I loved the DASH, an idea way ahead of its time. Its a real shame they failed to work all the bugs out of the system. The DASH was even rated as a nuclear depth bomb delivery platform as I recall.

[Krauter]

I was more interested in the linked Seal drone named "the Beast". Kind of interesting logic behind building a stealth drone to do surveillance on Al-Quaeda.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Sounds like Bride of DASH

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrodyne_QH-50_DASH

The Gearing-class destroyers (and apparently the earlier Sumners) were refitted to carry DASH as part of the FRAM-1 and FRAM-2 rebuilds, including landing deck and hangar.





As pointed out in the article they were removed from service in 1969, so I never saw one, joining the Brinkley Bass in March 1970 as I did. I was told that both of ours had been lost at sea - one when the blades locked up and it crashed and sank, and the other when it was ordered to return to the ship and decided not to, last see cruising merrily over the horizon.

I hope this new version fares better.