Can Fire Scout Drone Help Save LCS?

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/02/can-fire-scout-drone-help-save-lcs/



The older, smaller MQ-8B Fire Scout compared to the new and larger MQ-8C

Can Fire Scout Drone Help Save LCS?
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on February 13, 2014 at 4:48 PM

At 11 years old, the robot helicopter called the MQ-8 Fire Scout is a at least a preadolescent. But ever since the reconnaissance drone’s first flight in 2002, it’s had one big problem: It’s a little bit…little.

So, at the Navy’s request, manufacturer Northrop Grumman basically did a brain transplant. It put the Fire Scout’s software, appropriately modified, in a much larger helicopter. If the new adult-sized Fire Scout, designated MQ-8C, meets the Navy’s expectations, it will be able to fly about 50 percent faster, 25 percent higher, and more than twice as long than the current model, MQ-8B. That would make the C-model a much more effective scout for the fleet, which is especially important for a controversial warship with size issues of its own: the Littoral Combat Ship.

The first of the larger Fire Scouts started flying last fall. As of yesterday, Northrop now has its second MQ-8C in the air. The two robo-choppers are currently just flying out of land bases, but shipboard tests are scheduled for the summer. The MQ-8C should be able to fit aboard the Navy’s FFG-7 Perry-class frigates, which already use the smaller MQ-8B as well as the larger (and manned) SH-60 Sea Hawk. But for now, the Navy plans to start testing the MQ-8C on its big DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers.

In the long run, though, the warship program with the most at stake is the Littoral Combat Ship. Smaller, faster, cheaper, and considerably more fragile than a Perry frigate, let alone a full-sized destroyer, the LCS was designed from the start as a kind of miniature aircraft carrier, a modular mothership that could launch and control a wide variety of unmanned aircraft, mini-subs, and surface craft.