Navy Evaluates Man-Machine Pairing with New Fire Scout.

• Author: Machi, Vivienne

SAN DIEGO--The Navy continues to experiment with how to efficiently partner up manned and unmanned aerial platforms to survey, detect and engage targets at sea, as the forthcoming MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned aerial system moves through testing.

A successor to the MQ-8B, the Northrop Grumman-developed platform is teamed with a manned helicopter, Sikorsky's MH-60R or MH-60S Seahawk, to perform various missions such as reconnaissance, situational awareness, aerial fire support and precision targeting support for ground, air and sea forces.

Pairing the Fire Scout and Seahawk together has allowed the Navy to use one system to perform broad-area maritime search operations while waiting to employ a more agile, manned platform to execute the mission, said Cmdr. Edward Johnson, MQ-8 Fire Scout requirements officer.

The two aircraft complement each other, he said at the 2018 WEST conference in San Diego co-hosted by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and the U.S. Naval Institute.

"One is the hunter, one is the killer; one is the looker and one is the doer," he said. "Going forward, that's how we're always going to look at these aircraft... as a family of systems with complementary capabilities."

The Fire Scout concept first came out of a joint program with the Army, but the Navy decided to move forward after the service abandoned the concept, said Jack Thomas, Fire Scout mission engineering director at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.

The B variant, first introduced in 2009, is based on a Schweizer 333 airframe--now owned by Sikorsky--on which Northrop integrated advanced sensors, payloads and an autonomous flight control system. The MQ-8B has between five and six hours of total endurance with an operational ceiling of 12,000 feet. Northrop built 29 units and 23 are still in the fleet, Thomas said.

The Navy awarded the company a $262 million contract in 2010 to build the MQ-8C. The first operational unit was delivered to the Navy in 2014, and initial operating capability is anticipated for later this year.

Both variants of the Fire Scout provide long-range detection to the service, Thomas noted. "It goes out, detects targets, tracks them, identifies them... and then the manned helicopter engages the surface target."

The C variant is larger and features upgraded capabilities over its predecessor. It is based on the Bell 407 airframe, has an increased endurance of about 12 hours, and flies at 16,000 feet. "There was an urgent...