Coast Guard Wants Drones for Cheap

When the Coast Guard launched "Deepwater," its ambitious plan for a networked fleet in 2002, it included a futuristic tiltrotor drone intended to "exponentially increase the ocean area [the Coast Guard] can search." The plan to buy these Eagle Eye robo-craft, built by Bell, accounted for up to $1 billion of Deepwater's then-$17-billion cost.

So it's not surprising that, when Deepwater's ships starting coming in over-budget and the program ballooned to $25 billion, the Coast Guard "permanently deferred" Eagle Eye in 2007. That effectively put on ice any plans to buy drones -- and making the Coast Guard essentially the only major U.S. military or para-military organization without robots.

Now all that's about to change, the service's top weapons-buyer told me on Friday. Rear Admiral Gary Blore said the Coast Guard would buy two types of drones: one for flying off ships, the other to operate from land bases. The catch: they've got to be cheap.

So the Coast Guard is doubling up, Blore said. For ship operations, the rescue service is looking to buy a version of the Navy's Fire Scout robo-chopper, fitted with a sea-scanning radar. The Navy didn't have plans to install a radar on Fire Scout, but the Coast Guard begged, and the larger sea service obligingly slotted in radar development, Blore said. That radar work should happen next year, according to Northrop Grumman Fire Scout manager Doug Fronius.

Meanwhile, for "medium surveillance," the Coast Guard might team up with Customs and Border Patrol. The border service three years ago bought several B-model Predators (called "Reapers" by the Air Force) for monitoring remote stretches of borderland. The Coast Guard would have its own Predators, but could share Customs' command-and-control facilities.

They may not be fancy tiltrotors, but any drones are better than no drones at all.
Wired