A team at nearby Webster Field Annex is working briskly to support an urgent Navy request to weaponise the MQ-8B Fire Scout, marking the first time the Navy will arm an unmanned aircraft.

The Fire Scout team and NAVAIR’s structures rotary-wing division personnel conducted the first of a series of tests March 7 on the newly installed hardware, which will gauge how the system will operate in the shipboard environment.

“This is the very first weaponisation programme on this aircraft,” said Jeremy Moore, Fire Scout weapons system integration lead. Part of the rapid deployment capability (RDC) acquisition process, “it was identified by the fleet as an urgent need for joint forces, so we are pressing forward as hard as we can to get it out there.”

The Navy plans to arm the MQ-8B Fire Scout with a laserguided rocket, the advanced precision kill weapon system (APKWS), in just 18 months. Typically, this type of development would take two to three years at a minimum, Moore said. Arming the Fire Scout with a guided rocket will enable the fleet to engage hostile threats with the Fire Scout independent of air support from carrier or shore-based aircraft. This capability will keep the warfighter out of harm’s way, Moore said.

Bill McCartney, Fire Scout’s Air Vehicle flight test lead, said the weaponisation of any aircraft is an intricate process, particularly it in this case since it is the first time the Navy will arm an unmanned aircraft.

“We had a very tight timeline to conduct trade studies and complete design reviews,” McCartney said. “Now, we are starting to execute tests, and there is little time in the schedule for repeats.”