Navy retooling Fire Scout program

SAN DIEGO – The Navy is shifting its focus of how to employ its emerging MQ-8C Fire Scout rotary-wing unmanned vehicles to help Littoral Combat Ships take on tougher targets. In the last 12 months, the Navy’s shift of focus has gone from protecting LCS from fast smarm attacks to using new sensors to provide targeting information for weapons aboard LCS, Cmdr. Edward Johnson, the Navy’s Fire Scout requirements officer, said during a panel here at the WEST 2019 conference. The new focus comes as the Navy has included additional weaponry for LCS to make it more lethal. Plans had called for the Fire Scouts to be armed with 70mm Hydra rockets equipped with the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) guidance system to take on threats. The shifted focus will be to a “more sensor-laden targeting platform” for the developing over-the-horizon (OTH) Naval Strike Missile, Johnson said, with the right kind of sensors, multi-functional radar, passive targeting capability, and networks to push the information to the “right people at the right times.” The captain, who has control of the ship and Fire Scout, will now have his own asset to generate that OTH targeting information out to about 300 miles. The larger “Charlie” model is based on the Bell 407 airframe, and with future long-range weapons that include the anti-surface Naval Strike Missile. Naval Air Systems Command has said the aircraft will also be compatible with the systems aboard the next-generation frigate (FFG(X)) currently under development. The C-variant is currently being tested after completing an Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) event in 2018. (Source: USNI News 02/20/19) Gulf Coast Note: Northrop Grumman began flight tests of the MQ-8C Fire Scout in 2018. The unmanned helicopter is produced in Moss Point, Miss., at the Trent Lott International Airport. The Moss Point facility is key to producing and testing of the Fire Scout, the Navy’s newest autonomous helicopter.