Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] are on track for the first flight of their new unmanned helicopter effort based on the Fire Scout vertical takeoff unmanned air vehicle (VTUAV) and Bell’s 407 airframe, according to a Northrop Grumman official.
Last year, Northrop Grumman, which is currently developing the Fire Scout VTUAV for the Navy, began to detect the emergence of new mission areas calling for a more capable VTUAV, Robert Davis, business development for advanced concepts, told reporters during a briefing at AUVSI’s annual North America conference, recently. Additionally, an upcoming Marine Corps solicitation for a VTUAV to transport cargo as well as an anticipated 2011 Navy competition for a medium range unmanned air system (UAS), led Northrop Grumman to explore adding another unmanned system to its menu, Davis said.
“As we look at all of that, and what is going on across the world, we determined we needed to add another member to the family,” he said.
While Northrop Grumman intends to export technologies from its Fire Scout VTUAV into Fire X, Davis said the company also needed an airframe that is capable.
“As we looked at all the aircraft that could possible be unmanned we came to the conclusion that the Bell 407 lent itself best to doing this [expeditiously], cost effectively, reliably, with a very well established base of capability that Bell supports from a logistics point of view from across the world,” he said. “That’s what led to the unification of these two capabilities.”
Bell has produced more than 1,000 407s since 1996 and the helicopter has chalked up more than 2.5 million flight hours over the course of its life, Davis noted.
Combining Bell’s 407 history with the thousands of hours and thousands of flights Northrop Grumman has achieved on Fire Scout, has given the team a tremendous amount of learning curve as it develops and soon demonstrates this new shipboard UAV
“We are confident we can build a very reliable, low-cost, highly producible vehicle for the future,” Davis.
That low-risk, low-cost effort is achieved by using many of the same suppliers working on Fire Scout, he noted.
While those companies may not be doing exactly what they are in the Fire Scout program, Davis added the technology embedded in the program will convey to Fire X.
“When we say this is a low-cost, low-risk development program, that is the basis for how we can substantiate that claim,” he said.
Fire X is about twice the size of Fire Scout, is a bit faster, and can carry five-fold the payload of Fire Scout, Davis said. The payload can be carried either internally, externally, or both ways, he added.
“It has a lot of flexibility in terms of what payload it can carry. We are planning to accommodate a whole suite of ISR capabilities,” he said. “The airframe was designed in such a way to lend itself to a high degree of flexibility for configuring it to meet the evolving needs of our customers as they execute mission and their missions evolve.”
To accommodate eventually shipboard deployment, Davis said the Fire X team is looking at future plans to make the rotor system foldable. “It will allow us to store birds in a very compact way. Probably put two of these in the same footprint as a MH-60 aboard a ship.”
Fire X will carry upward of 3,000 pounds and fly for up to 16 hours, and at an altitude of almost 20,000 feet, David said.
“We already envision a cargo UAS configuration. This bird might be capable of delivering [to] different destinations in terms of dropping off food, water, fuel or bullets,” he said.
The Fire X team also envisions the potential that the VTUAV could be outfitted to internally carry litters. “It has the physical dimensions that enable us to do that perhaps for as many as two people,” Davis said.
“It will have the capability to do sling operations, and also has a voluminous interior cabin [with] 60 cubic feet [of space],” he added. “We are working diligently on developing this capability. We will have this aircraft flying by the end of the calendar year.”