Fire Scout
A new unmanned helicopter could revolutionize the way special operations forces working in hard-to-reach environments are resupplied with beans, bullets, and band aids. But while Northrop Grumman's MQ-8B Fire Scout might someday serve in a close air support role and offer the Navy a platform for destroying enemy submarines and surface vessels, that type of capability is still a long way off. In fact, Fire Scout is only one of many new UAV programs that are keeping defense contractors busy and tempting the military with the prospect of war without (friendly) casualties. To be fair, the Fire Scout is one of the more interesting UAVs on display in Paris--unlike many of its competitors, it is capable of vertical takeoff and landing. Still, it's unclear that this unmanned helicopter would offer the U.S. military a capability not already available. According to Northrop, the Fire Scout is already in late stage development for the U.S. Army and Navy and is generating interest in 13 foreign markets.
The Fire Scout's specs seem impressive: 125+ knot airspeed, a flight ceiling of 20,000 feet, and a 600 lb maximum payload. But Lockheed Martin's manned/unmanned K-MAX helicopter, although slightly slower, can carry 6,000 lbs at sea level and 5,000 lbs at 9,500 feet, with a ceiling of 29,000 feet. Similarly, some of the Fire Scout's gizmos and gadgets--like a harpoon on its underbelly that anchors it to the flight deck and its modular payload system--don't seem to offer much in the way of new capability. But there are a lot of skeptics out there, including WWS pal Christian Lowe, who wrote last month that,
It seems like a classic case of a Pentagon project on life support, bouncing from the Navy to the Marine Corps and now as part of the Army's (potentially doomed) FCS program.
Another potential problem is Northrop's emphasis on interfacing the Fire Scout with the Littoral Combat Ship, a program that seemed at one point to embody the Navy's future but is now on the brink of collapse. Still, Dave Fuqua, Northrop's Business Development Manager for the Fire Scout, says he's not worried because of the Fire Scout's versatile ability that "qualifies it to land on all air capable ships."
The Fire Scout does have the potential to wreak havoc on the enemy, as demonstrated by a successful rocket test in Yuma, AZ in July of 2005, but first it will need a radar--a hurdle that the company has yet to overcome despite the fact that many other UAVs have already achieved weaponization. But the real issue may simply be that the Fire Scout is trying to fill a role that's already been ably filled by other platforms. Three Fire Scouts with rotor blades folded have the same footprint as one Navy H-60 Seahawk, but it's unclear as to whether there's any mission that three Fire Scouts can carry out as well as one workhorse H-60. The Fire Scout is a "complement, not replacement" to current helicopters and weapons systems, the program manager said. But in the meantime, the Navy is more than capable of defeating whatever subs, ships, and air assets with which it comes into contact.