By Emelie Rutherford
The Coast Guard is looking at buying two varieties of unmanned-aerial vehicles (UAVs), and may seek funding in the fiscal year 2010 federal budget for mid-altitude drone aircraft that launch from land, its acquisition leader said.
The Coast Guard has been studying unmanned aircraft on the market, after halting plans last year for a Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] vertical-lift UAV, which was to deploy with the National Security Cutter (NSC) yet the service said was not close enough to production.
The service completed a UAV path-forward study in August that found both land and cutter-based tactical UAVs could provide “cost-effective solutions” for maritime surveillance, according to a white paper the service prepared for the Department of Homeland Security.
The Coast Guard would like a ship-based vertical-lift UAV, such as the Northrop Grumman [NOC]-built Fire Scout helicopter the Navy is buying, according to Coast Guard Rear Adm. Gary Blore, assistant commandant for acquisition. The guard would deploy such an aircraft on its NSC and future Offshore Patrol Cutter, Blore told reporters at the service’s Washington offices Tuesday.
“They would deploy with the cutter, actually launch from the cutter for three to four hours and patrol locally, kind of as a picket around the cutter,” he said.
The Coast Guard also is looking at mid-altitude unmanned aircraft that launch from land and return to land, that have “a 15- to 20-hour endurance, that could go out and fly sorties, much as manned fixed-wing aircraft do, and report back on contacts and identify what they see,” Blore said.
Coast Guard officials “absolutely need both” types of tactical unmanned aircraft, he said.
“Just like in the aviation community, you have both fixed-wing and helicopters, because you have very different missions,” he said.
The white paper cites the need for a mid-altitude land-based drone that “will notionally provide surveillance comparable to that provided via various maritime patrol aircraft.” The document describes a potential Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration for the Coast Guard “to operate an UAS with a maritime radar and other needed avionics extensively within maritime missions in various environments to develop a clear understanding of the required characteristics of a ‘marinized’ land-based UAS.”
For such a land-based UAV, the Coast Guard is paying particular attention to the General Atomics-built Predator used by the Defense Department and DHS’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the paper says.
“We feel that the mid-altitude UAS (unmanned-aerial) systems, while we haven’t entered them in the budget process yet, are technologically and production mature, so that we think we’re ready to go with a mid-altitude UAS,” Blore said.
It remains to be seen if funding for such a land-based UAV ends up in the White House’s FY ’10 budget request that is expected to be sent to Congress next February, he said.
Meanwhile, it will likely take an additional year for any potential Coast Guard budget request for a cutter-based vertical-lift UAV, Blore said.
He said that’s because the Coast Guard currently does not have a good example of such an existing UAV with a fully integrated maritime radar, which his service would need. Yet he said he is hopeful about the Fire Scout, on which the Navy intends to integrate such a radar this fiscal year, he said.
The Coast Guard is conducting a study to determine the most-effective UAV for the NSC, according to the white paper, which cites the importance of the maritime radar.
“The cutter-based UAS must be able to perform the entire surveillance, detection, classification, and identification chain, particularly identification, which uses optics to acquire key identifying characteristics of a vessel of interest prior to prosecution by the cutter’s boarding team or weapons systems,” the paper says.
In evaluating UAVs, the Coast Guard is playing close attention to the systems’ technology maturity and production readiness, and is “leaning toward” partnering with other government agencies that have UAV programs, Blore said.