By Calvin Biesecker
The Coast Guard this week released a Request for Information (RFI) for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) that could eventually operate from its National Security Cutters (NSC) to enhance their ability to conduct various missions such as drug and migrant interdiction.
The service’s Research and Development Center will use the information it obtains from the market survey to understand how existing capabilities contribute to carrying out NSC missions and to possibly identify systems for Advanced Technology Demonstrations that are planned for mid-2009. The UAS, including its payloads, ground control station, and control and data links, will perform surveillance to support the cutters in the detection, classification, identification and tracking of surface targets while providing near real-time data to the ship.
The unmanned aircraft will also loiter over targets of interest and be able to relocate previously detected targets and perform classification and identification, according to the Oct. 28 RFI (Sol. No. HSCG32-09-I-R00003. Contact: Helen Nelson, 860-441-2843, [email protected]).
The Coast Guard’s effort to find and field a vertical take-off and landing UAS have been underway for a number of years but the path has been difficult. Last year the service terminated its effort with Textron [TXT] for the Eagle Eye project, which was struggling in its development.
According to an Oct. 8 white paper released by the Coast Guard, the service is interested in the Fire Scout UAS that Northrop Grumman [NOC] has been developing for the Navy.
“Of critical importance to the USCG (United States Coast Guard) is the success of ongoing efforts by the Navy and the contractor to integrate maritime radar on the Fire Scout and the Navy’s successful operational tests on a surface combatant,” the white paper says. The maritime radar is key to providing the USCG a method of detecting noncooperative targets moving on the water’s surface.”
In addition to operating from the NSC, the Coast Guard would like any vertical take-off and landing UAS it acquires to eventually operate from its Offshore Patrol Cutters (OPC). Of the eight high-endurance NSCs that the Coast Guard plans to field, only one has been delivered by the ship’s contractor Northrop Grumman. Once NSC production ends, the service hopes to begin production on a fleet of 25 medium-endurance OPCs.
The Coast Guard eventually plans to look at land-based UAS as well (Defense Daily, Oct. 23). According to the white paper, the service is interested in both tactical and strategic land-based UAS for maritime missions. For the tactical UAS, the Coast Guard is eyeing the General Atomics-build Predator and for the strategic system the Northrop Grumman Broad Area Maritime Surveillance platform, which is being developed for the Navy.