Drug runners and pirates beware: a US Navy helicopter drone made its first official drug bust on April 3. The US Navy Fire Scout stealthily tailed a “go-fast” boat suspected of carrying narcotics for three hours, and captured video of the boat’s refuelling rendezvous with a fishing vessel. Not a bad outcome for started as a “routine test flight,” according to Navy reports.
The quiet drone surveillance eventually allowed the guided-missile frigate USS McInerney and its detachment of US Coast Guard law enforcement to move in for the seizure. The drug runners dumped perhaps 200kg into the water, but the Navy ship still nabbed about 132 pounds.
The MQ-8B drone has been aboard the USS McInerney since October 2009, and the Navy plans to have more operating on the high seas in the near future. The US Army initially had its own order for the helicopter drone, but that version was terminated in a slew of budget cuts.
Still, it’s just one part of a growing unmanned sky swarm, given that the US has also deployed Reaper drones to search for pirates in the waters off the Horn of Africa. The Marine Corps has been testing its own unmanned K-MAX helicopter as an aerial mule which can move 1,360kg across 960km.
If DARPA gets its way, we might see drones flying off of self-assembling naval bases in the imagined future. — Jeremy Hsu
[via Ares Defense Blog]
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