Defence

Northrop Grumman has conducted the first flight of its own MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned air vehicle, designated P6, at the Webster Field Annex portion of NAS Patuxent River, Maryland.

The 20min flight followed the Fire Scout's routine fully autonomous functional flight mission plan of vehicle start, take-off, flight, landing and shutdown.

The demonstration is part an ongoing effort to expand the development capabilities of the Fire Scout. Near-term plans include the integration of a maritime radar, a second electro-optical/infrared payload and various US Army-specific payloads.

© Northrop Grumman

"The first flight of P6 is a significant milestone showing that the company-owned MQ-8B Fire Scout is ready to support system demonstrations with a variety of payloads," says Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems P6 programme manager Rick Crooks.

Fire Scout is designed to find, track and designate targets, provide targeting data to strike platforms and perform battle damage assessment. Northrop says it has an endurance greater than 8h.

Payload integration for the test flights takes place at Northrop's unmanned systems development centre in San Diego, California, while the demonstrations will continue at Webster Field and the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.