The US Navy’s MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter will go through evaluation with the Marine Corps on an amphibious warfare ship, service officials said.
Testifying April 20 before the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee, Lt. Gen. Jon M. Davis, deputy commandant for Aviation, said the service now is deploying its RQ-21A Blackjack unmanned aerial systems (UAS) with Marine Expeditionary Units onboard ships of Navy amphibious ready groups, but “we’re looking for a Group 4 and a Group 5 UAS that have long dwell, long duration, manned/unmanned teaming concepts out there to include the future of vertical lift, be it manned/optionally unmanned capability.
“We’re borrowing some MQ-8Cs from the U.S. Navy for a period of time to grow into taking a larger [unmanned aerial vehicle] off of an amphibious ship to go provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance and intelligence], fires if need be. We’re pretty excited about that. We’ve got a requirements document study that’s going on in Quantico [Va.] to tell us exactly what they want us to pursue.
“We think UAS could deliver people, could deliver ordnance, could deliver fires, could deliver surveillance, so we’re looking for a wide aperture for what we can do with these platforms in the future,” he said.
Source: Seapower