With funding scarce and no full-up solution currently available, the Coast Guard plans to begin a two-phase test effort next year to examine the ability of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to operate from its National Security Cutters (NSC) as an interim capability until more effective unmanned aircraft are available to support its new fleet of high endurance vessels.
Phase one of the test effort would include a two-week underway period with one of the three currently operational NSCs sometime next summer. The purpose of this phase, which will include flight-testing of a small UAS, is to collect data on flight deck operations and other issues that will take months to analyze and also help inform subsequent follow- on test requirements.
The UAS that will be used will be Boeing‘s [BA] Scan Eagle aircraft. The Scan Eagle will be provided by the Navy and its use in the demonstration is based on its availability rather than it being the small UAS of choice for the Coast Guard, Cmdr. Tom Meyer, aviation domain manager within the service’s Research and Development Center (RDC), said recently.
The second phase will begin in late 2012 or early 2013 and include flight operations of the Scan Eagle aircraft, aboard an underway NSC. The flights will be more than a test.
“We want to see this operating in a more operational environment rather than just an engineering or testing effort,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Vajda of the Coast Guard’s Office of Aviation Forces. It will be important to see how the aircraft works with other systems on the ship and how it contributes to the mission, he said.
“Being able to see the increases in that prosecution chain are critical for us,” Vajda said.
For the past several years or more the Coast Guard has been closely monitoring the Navy’s Fire Scout UAS program to potentially leverage investments in that aircraft for use on the NSC and eventual Offshore Patrol Cutter fleet, which is still early in the design phase. Whether the Coast Guard settles on Fire Scout as its objective system is undetermined and the service would want that UAS to be outfitted with maritime surface search radar to meet its requirements. Fire Scout is made by Northrop Grumman [NOC].
The Coast Guard did not request funding in its FY ’12 budget for cutter-based UAS capabilities.
Coast Guard maritime boarding teams, working in conjunction with the Navy in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, have already participated in operations that involved Fire Scout being used to track drug smuggling vessels.
For the Scan Eagle flight operations, the Coast Guard will examine the use of several sensors that are currently being reviewed by the RDC.
The Coast Guard would like to include UAS as part of its medium and high-endurance cutter fleets to provide them with more tools for surveillance, detection, classification, identification and mission prosecution, Vajda said.
The Coast Guard officials stressed that the small UAS effort is strictly an effort to explore an interim capability as a bridge to the larger more complex objective cutter- based UAS systems.
As for potentially acquiring a small UAS capability, the officials said it’s too early to know the way forward.
The Coast Guard is also exploring the use of land-based UAS and is currently cooperating with Customs and Border Protection, which operates several Predator UAS called Guardians that have been optimized for maritime operations. CBP and Coast Guard flight crews conduct joint maritime operations with the Guardians. General Atomics makes the Predator.