ScanEagle

Originally developed as a tuna spotting aircraft for the fishing industry in the US Pacific northwest, the ScanEagle’s compact support footprint and utility were quickly recognised by the US military, and it entered service with the US Marine Corps in Iraq in 2005 and shortly after with the US Navy to help protect Iraqi oil infrastructure. Launched by a ‘SuperWedge’ catapult which hurls the air vehicle into the air in less than four metres with a force of more than 12 gs, it is recovered by the agricultural looking but effective ‘SkyHook’ lasso via a hook on the ScanEagle’s wingtip.

Insitu Pacific is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Oregon based Insitu Inc, which in turn is part of Boeing. The Brisbane based operation employs about 60 people in Australia and is responsible for marketing to and looking after customers in the Asia Pacific region.

“We formed Insitu Pacific with the intent of building local capability and focussing on the local customer,” managing director of Insitu Pacific, Andrew Duggan, explained. “Unmanned systems are changing so quickly, and if you want to remain at the cutting edge you’ve got to have an ability to adapt rapidly to change the operational requirements and also to grab new payloads that are coming off the shelf and put them into service very quickly. That really is the core business that I see us being in here at Insitu Pacific.

Right now it’s all about local knowledge, local expertise, being right down the road from the Army so that we can respond very quickly and get that feedback loop from the field very rapidly. ” To this end, Insitu Pacific has established a training centre in Brisbane with a 20-seat classroom, three operator simulators, and a maintenance training area. It has also set up a flight test and instruction facility at Watts Bridge airfield near Esk, about 100km northwest of Brisbane, complete with a full ground control station (GCS), maintenance facilities, and launch and retrieve equipment.

In mid 2006 as the troubled JP129 program was struggling to gain traction, the Australian Army began looking at an unmanned capability to support its forces in Iraq under an urgent operational requirement.

“We had flagged it to Army and told them it was available and working well for the USMC in Iraq,” Duggan said. “Obviously it was clear there was going to be a need to do something and Army was looking around. We showed them the capability, and after they had a further look at it in the US, the urgent operational requirement was raised. We went from contract signature to being in-theatre in two and a half months. ” The initial contract was a full service agreement based on an hourly rate of effort where Boeing/Insitu personnel initially operated all elements of the system while training up Army operators in-theatre. But this has gradually migrated to an arrangement where Army personnel now conduct the majority of the flying operations, with Insitu staff embedded to conduct launch, recovery and maintenance operations. To date, more than 30,000 operational ScanEagle hours have been flown for the Army, and more than 150 Army operators have been trained.

Army ScanEagle operators come from 20 Surveillance and Target Acquisition Regiment based at Enoggera in Brisbane, and the entire system and its support is provided to the Army on a per hour basis. “The lease based contract allows the customer to make rapid changes to the hardware specification without needing to go through a fairly lengthy acquisition or upgrade process,” said Duggan. “For good reason, the ADF has some fairly lengthy and detailed processes if they want to change something in a system they own, soit’s not easy to undergo a mid-life upgrade.

But if it’s owned by a contractor, it’s there as fast as the contractor can change it around, and at the end of the day the only thing the ADF is paying for is the surveillance and reconnaissance service it gets out the back end of it. ” To this end, Australian ScanEagles have recently fielded enhanced EO cameras, the NightEagle mid-wave cooled IR sensor which is now the payload of choice for night operations, new silenced engines, and an integration kit for ScanEagle control from Bushmaster armoured vehicles.

And Insitu is also now offering a new radio relay communications payload and the NanoSAR miniature synthetic aperture radar sensor in a slightly extended forward fuselage bay as well.

A more powerful Mark IV catapult and accompanying upgrades to the SkyHook which are now being fielded will not only allow for higher weight launches and thus greater endurance for the ScanEagle in the ‘hot and high’ 7000ft density altitude of Tarin Kowt in central Afghanistan, but will also allow for operations with Insitu’s next air vehicle it will soon be offering, the Integrator.

Resembling a scaled-up ScanEagle with a bulkier fuselage and twin-boom tail, the Integrator falls into the heavier Tier II Plus category of UASs. The new vehicle is in its final stages of development at Insitu’s Oregon test facility and is expected to be fielded with an unnamed coalition partner in Afghanistan towards the end of the year.

Unfortunately for Insitu, despite its capability potential and ability to be easily integrated into the ScanEagle’s support infrastructure and lease arrangement, the Integrator’s development timeline appears to be just a little too long for Australian Army needs, with a JP129 Phase 2 solution expected to be chosen as soon as July.

Indeed, in early May the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of the possible Foreign Military Sale of two AAI RQ‑7B Shadow 200 systems and associated equipment to Australia, although the ADF says no firm acquisition decision for the type, being considered under JP 129 Phase 2, has been made.

“The Government of Australia has requested a possible sale of two RQ-7B Shadow 200 unmanned aircraft systems, communication equipment to include four ground control stations, support equipment, spare and repair parts, tools and test equipment, technical data and publications, personnel training and training equipment, US government and contractor engineering, technical and logistics support services, and other related elements of logistics support,” the May 6 dated notice reads. “The estimated cost is (US)$218m (A$258m). ” But an ADF spokesperson clarified the notification to AA, saying “the Australian government has not yet made a decision to acquire the Shadow 200 Tactical Unmanned Air Vehicle (TUAV) system or any other TUAV system,” adding that “Defence plans to present a business case for JP 129 Phase 2 for government consideration in the second half of 2010. The US Congressional Notification has occurred to enable the potential sale but the details of the US Foreign Military Sales offer to Australia via a Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) has not yet been received by Defence. The details of the timeframe for delivery of the systems will be contained in the LOA, and if the Shadow 200 system is chosen [entry into service, IOC and FOC] timeframes will be influenced by the availability of the systems from the supplier. ” Further details of JP 129 Phase 2 noted in the Defence Portfolio Budget Statements for the federal government’s 2010- 11 budget state that “Defence … places emphasis on operationally proven offthe- shelf systems which can be delivered in minimum time to support current and future operational needs. ” Also likely to be of interest to Australia is the recently tested ScanEagle Compressed Carriage (SECC), a development of the ScanEagle system with folding control surfaces that will allow it to be launched from wing pylons, internal weapons bays, or even sonar buoy tubes of maritime patrol aircraft such as Boeing’s P-8A Poseidon which will likely be the manned replacement for the RAAF’s AP-3C Orion later this decade.

“SECC takes the ScanEagle design and modifies that quite heavily,” says Duggan.

“You could see a number of opportunities where a P-8 could operate SECC – a P-8 will tend to stay at high altitude to use its wide area sensors, but if it wants to look at a specific vessel, it could drop a SECC to go down to eyeball it and track it for a period of time and continue to transmit back while the P-8 goes off and does other missions. That air vehicle, given that it s going to have lengthy endurance, could head off and recover to an ADF vessel, or it could be ditched in a wartime scenario.

There is also obvious functionality of leaving an SECC loitering over a field of sonar buoys and continuing to relay that data to a P-8 or nearby surface vessel. The options it provides are considerable. ” As Duggan says, while the capability has become an important one for the Australian Army, for Boeing “selling ScanEagle services is never going to be a massive business comparable to sales of multiple passenger or fighter aircraft. ” But what the diminutive air vehicle has done is offer affordable, service based capability at a reasonable price, while also having the potential to become a critical enabler for other platforms such as the P-8.