Sub tracking UAV

From Aviation Week

Boeing Reveals Sub-Tracking ScanEagle Study

Jun 9, 2008

Guy Norris/Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

SEATTLE – Boeing, Insitu and the U.S. Navy are studying a variant of the ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that could be air-dropped from a P-8A or other aircraft to detect and stealthily track submarines over many hours.

The magnetometer-equipped UAV, dubbed “MagEagle Compressed,” would “go out and find a submarine and follow it for 24 hours,” says John Hearing, senior manager for Boeing Tactical Unmanned Systems. The initiative is a direct outgrowth of ScanEagle Compressed Carriage (SECC), a project aimed at developing a version of the 10-foot wing span UAV that could be “inserted” via air drop or even from a submarine.

The SECC was itself a follow-on to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories (AFRL) and ScanEagle team’s Dominator area dominance munition technology program, which was developed to provide “an air dropped UAV that has persistence,” Hearing says. The project was “looking for a loitering version that could be dropped off a P-8, or EPX [proposed signals intelligence gathering EP-3 replacement], or F-18 or C-130, and we’ve done limited testing and flew a shape last year,” he adds.

A follow-on phase was conducted earlier this year in which an SECC was dropped out of a C-130, slowed down in its packaging to ScanEagle flight speeds (around 75 knots maximum level speed), before deploying its wings. “We’re now going to the next step and working on the sensors. We’ve now just added the MagEagle Compressed,” Hearing says.

The initiative comes just after Boeing and the Navy opted to drop the magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) feature from the upcoming P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. Although originally part of the design, the MAD was withdrawn when planners became confident that acoustic processing systems will provide adequate sub-hunting capability. Boeing officials also say the removal of the tail-mounted stinger saved weight and drag at a time when the Navy was looking for additional range and endurance. [Emphasis mine]

Other SECC/Dominator-related ScanEagle follow-on’s already announced include a biological combat assessment system to collect data on biological hazards, as well as identify and assess hostile threats. The system is designed to monitor sites suspected of containing weapons of mass destruction, and to locate, track and collect biological warfare agents released into the air during air strikes.

The SECC has also been designed for launch from submarines using a sealed container that would be ejected from the Trident missile launch silo. Once airborne, the sealed container would split to reveal the ScanEagle, which would unfold its wings and start its engine.

Other upgrades being studied for the baseline version of ScanEagle include a system to allow autonomous tracking of moving targets, and new payloads including a small synthetic aperture radar (SAR) weighing less than 21 pounds. The “NanoSAR,” developed by Utah-based Imsar, has been flight tested and is potentially available for deployment on active service. “We’ve had discussions with the government to take it out to the theater,” Hearing says.

In service with the U.S. and Australian forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas, the ScanEagle has so far amassed more than 85,000 hours of “combat” time and more than 7,000 sorties.