Navy Armed Drones

Just like the Air Force, the Army and the CIA, the Navy soon could be deploying its own armed drones.

To that end, the Navy will request funds in fiscal year 2010 to begin outfitting its new surveillance drone with kinetic weapons.

The drone, which is scheduled to enter service next year, is the vertical-takeoff and landing tactical unmanned air vehicle, or VTUAV, which is also known as Fire Scout.

The aircraft is a modified Schweizer 333 helicopter that the Navy wants to fly off the decks of its littoral combat ships.

During the next several months, the Naval Air Systems Command will be examining various weapons that are considered viable candidates for the VTUAV.

“For the first time, we are looking at the integration of weapons on UAVs,” said Cmdr. Robert Murphy, team leader at the Naval Air Systems Command.

The weapons must be lightweight, Murphy said at a conference of the Precision Strike Association. The Fire Scout can carry only a 600-pound payload. The aircraft is being equipped with electro-optical infrared cameras. The Navy is seeking funds in 2009 to add a radar sensor.

The manufacturer of Fire Scout, Northrop Grumman Corp. of San Diego, already has fired 2.75-inch unguided rockets from the aircraft in tests two years ago at the Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz.

In the test, the Fire Scout lifted off, traveled nearly 10 miles to the firing range where the first rocket was fired. The aircraft remained in forward flight at about 40 knots during the first firing. For the second rocket launch, the Fire Scout increased its speed to 52 knots.

Northrop Grumman is under contract to build nine Fire Scouts but anticipates much bigger orders, said Michael Fuqua, a business development manager. The future of the aircraft is tied to the littoral combat ship. If the Navy reaches its current goal of building 56 ships, it could end up buying as many as 100 Fire Scouts. Fuqua said the aircraft also could fly off the decks of larger destroyers or amphibious vessels. “It is qualified to land on any air-capable ship,” he said in an interview.

The contractor tests at Yuma, which the Navy did not fund, only proved that weapons could be launched from Fire Scout, but the Navy still needs to do considerably more research in this area, said Murphy.

Upcoming studies will address the options available for weapons and launch mechanisms, he said.

The Navy would prefer to use weapons that already exist. “We don’t want to get tied to a big development,” said Murphy. “We want something we can integrate rapidly, that is easy to target.”

Northrop Grumman has done its own analysis on the various weapons available, Fuqua said. “There’s lots of them out there.” Options include missiles, smart bombs, projectiles and laser-guided rockets, he added.

The company would like to see the Navy adopt the Viper Strike semi-laser guided gliding weapon, which also is made by Northrop Grumman. The Army already has deployed the Viper Strike aboard its Hunter UAV. The gliding munition was designed to kill armored vehicles using GPS-aided navigation and a semi-active laser seeker.

The company is preparing for a major evaluation of the Fire Scout next year, when the aircraft will be tested by Navy planners in a live combat scenario.

“The primary threats are small swarming boats,” Fuqua said. The Fire Scout would hover over potential targets and provide images that commanders would use to determine whether an enemy boat should be struck. If needed, Fire Scout could also fly ashore for surveillance missions.

The aircraft route would be pre-programmed before it takes off, but it can be redirected while in flight if necessary. It can be controlled via UHF/VHF narrowband AN/ARC-210 radios or by a Ku-band tactical common data link. The aircraft is designed to endure 12-hour missions at distances of no more than 110 nautical miles. Its current speed is 80 knots, but the Navy predicts its maximum speed will reach 107 knots, Murphy said.

Eventually, the Navy wants the UAVs to exchange data with conventional attack aircraft, said Navy Capt. Donald Gaddis, program manager for the F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet.

“We’re thinking about how to communicate with UAVs,” he said at the conference. For that purpose, UAVs should be equipped with the Link 16 air-to-air information distribution system, and they should be part of the so-called “precise participant location and identification” network.

For the time being, the Navy will concentrate on understanding how to incorporate UAVs into combat scenarios at sea. “The problem with UAVs is that machines don’t understand the complexity of the decision making logic,” Murphy said. Just making them land on a moving ship is a “pretty complex challenge.” A major obstacle is the electromagnetic interference that occurs when the aircraft is trying to interact with radio emitters on the ship.

The Fire Scout program started in 2000 as a replacement for the aging Pioneer, which the Navy and the Marine Corps have been operating since 1985. But the Navy stopped funding the Fire Scout in 2001 as budgets shrank. The service resurrected it in 2004 as the VTUAV.

The Navy also has been engaged in an unmanned “combat air system” research effort to design and develop a strike aircraft that would operate from large-deck carriers. Northrop Grumman and the Boeing Company are competing for an upcoming award. The Navy budgeted approximately $240 million in 2007 for the “naval unmanned combat air vehicle carrier demonstration.”

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