WASHINGTON — There’s a new Fire Scout in the pipeline — bigger, faster, longer legs, more muscle. It’s still being assembled and won’t fly until later this year, but it’s headed for the fleet as soon as late 2014. And it could fundamentally change some of the parameters expected of the US Navy’s seagoing unmanned helicopter program.
The MQ-8 Fire Scout program has been under development for about a decade. A key factor for the aircraft was its small size, making it exceptionally handy to store and operate aboard ship.
The Navy often presents the diminutive Northrop Grumman aircraft as taking up about half the space of the H-60 Seahawk helos routinely deployed on surface combatants. And frigates are deploying with four MQ-8B Fire Scouts. Littoral combat ships are intended to routinely deploy with one or two Fire Scouts in addition to an H-60.
But something more was needed, and in 2011, US Africa Command and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) submitted an urgent needs request for an aircraft with more range and payload for their maritime-based ISR.
Northrop Grumman, before selecting the Schweizer 333 helicopter as the basis for its original Fire Scout bid, had evaluated the larger Bell 407 Jet Ranger, an aircraft familiar to Navy rotary flight school trainees as the TH-57 Sea Ranger.
To meet the new need for the larger UAV, the company proposed switching to the larger bird, but keeping the systems, electronics and ground control stations developed for the smaller helo. A demonstrator, dubbed Fire-X, was developed at company expense to show off the concept.
The Pentagon was impressed, and in the spring of 2012, Northrop received a contract for the first batch of up to 30 MQ-8C Fire Scouts using the basic Jet Ranger air frame...
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The new Fire Scout C is bigger — 10 feet longer than the B’s 31.7 feet, a foot higher, and with an operational ceiling 3,000 feet lower than the smaller helo’s 20,000 feet. But the C can fly at 140 knots over the B’s 110; has an internal payload of 1,000 pounds over the B’s 600 pounds; has a gross takeoff weight of 6,000 pounds compared with the B’s 3,150 pounds; and can stay aloft 11 to 14 hours versus the smaller vehicle’s endurance of four to five hours.
“The C will have approximately twice the capability of the B — time on station, payloads — and provides for additional growth, including radar,” said Capt. Patrick Smith, Fire Scout program manager at the Naval Air Systems Command. “And because of more endurance, it should have less impact on the crew, who can launch, then recover, the aircraft eight hours later.”
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