Fire Scout Research Papers

The Fire Scout was commissioned by the Department of the Navy to provide them with Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition (RSTA), and Aerial-Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (A-ISR) missions to support Commanders on the ground and at sea. The Fire Scout is a unique type of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) as it has Vertical Takeoff & Landing (VTOL) capability. This alone gives ground Commanders the ability to have a larger UAS at their disposable in most situations mainly due to it not needing a runway. It was originally designed for the Navy, but has since seen action in Afghanistan in support of Army missions as of May 2011 (1). There are two variants of the Fire Scout currently in use; MQ-8B and MQ-8C. With each variant, the Fire Scouts’ flight time and payload capability increases and allows the platform to carry an array of sensors for different types of Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) missions. Two examples of these sensors are the Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) sensor and the Small Tactical Radar Lightweight (STARLite) sensor. Like most units, the Fire Scout system is not just one platform. The Fire Scout system consists of three airframes, a ground control station, and other support vehicles …show more content…
The platform, like other Brigade level ones, could only stay on station for a couple of hours. This diminished possible intelligence collection of areas that were further away. Additionally, its range for its video feed was dependent on the line of sight to its home station and limited the video feed to the local infantry Battalion that it was stationed with in Kunduz city. Furthermore, there was not any Army GEOINT Analysts exploiting the video from the Fire Scout since the Navy sent theirs to accommodate the new use of the system for the Army. This prolonged the time it took for reports to get to the Brigade Commander and the GEOINT cell in Camp