Eagle Eye Tiltrotor UAV Will Bolster Coast Guard’s Sea Search Capability

By RICHARD R. BURGESS
Managing Editor

The Coast Guard is four years away from fielding its first unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), one that promises to revolutionize the way it patrols the seas. The swift new UAV will enable a Coast Guard cutter to exponentially increase the ocean area it can search.

The Eagle Eye vertical takeoff unmanned aerial vehicle (VUAV), designed and built by Bell Helicopter Textron, will be able to swiftly fly from a cutter to an area of interest over the horizon and survey a large number of watercraft. It will be able to linger in the area far longer than Coast Guard helicopters are able to loiter today. The Eagle Eye’s surveillance systems will give Coast Guard cutters a far greater scan capability than ever before.

The Eagle Eye is a small tiltrotor aircraft that takes off and lands vertically, much like its larger cousin, the V-22 Osprey, also built by Bell in a joint venture with Boeing. The Eagle Eye has propeller pods mounted on its wingtips that rotate vertically for takeoff, landing and hovering like a helicopter. The pods rotate horizontally for level flight like an airplane. Unlike the Osprey, the Eagle Eye’s tiltrotors are controlled by electro-servos rather than hydraulics, making the rotors simpler to operate and less susceptible to malfunction.

The unmanned craft carries a small sensor package including an electro-optical/infrared sensor and radar for identification and tracking of targets. The aircraft can be programmed before flight with self-generating search patterns and directed by computer keyboard to areas of interest. A shipboard operator with a joystick controls the sensor turret.

What made the Eagle Eye so attractive to the Coast Guard was its speed and persistence, according to Lt. Cmdr. Troy Beshears, a helicopter pilot and the service’s requirements officer for the Eagle Eye program. At more that 210 knots in level flight, the Eagle Eye is faster than any operational UAV except the giant RQ-4 Global Hawk. This speed allows the Eagle Eye to locate moving targets 80 to 110 nautical miles away in less than 30 minutes and recover quickly for a turn-around mission. The UAV also can loiter for four hours over a target 100 nautical miles away.

The aircraft’s speed and persistence may mean it has a future in the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps has not yet determined its replacement for the RQ-2 Pioneer fixed-wing battlefield surveillance UAV it has operated since the mid-1980s, but senior level Marines are interested in evaluating the Eagle Eye, according to a service official. Both Marine Corps squadrons of Pioneers were deployed to Iraq in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom and supported the advance of Marines toward Baghdad.

“Pioneer did very well in keeping up with the rapid advance for a system that wasn’t designed to be mobile,” said Maj. Greg Hanville, the UAV coordinator for Headquarters, Marine Corps. “Each [Pioneer] squadron moved five or six times [during the campaign].”

However, the Marine Corps is “dead set on a vertical takeoff replacement [for Pioneer],” Hanville said. “It’s the easiest thing to get off the boat,” he said, speaking of amphibious warfare ships.

“Mobility is the key,” Hanville said, in supporting the Corp’s Ship-to-Objective Maneuver strategy.

The service’s requirement in terms of mobility, speed, range and endurance “points to a tiltrotor.” But the Eagle Eye, Hanville said, “will need increased development” to meet Marine Corps requirements.

The 17.9-foot-long Eagle Eye stands only 3 feet tall, with a low center-of-gravity that provides a tremendous advantage for landing on a pitching flight deck. The small size also makes maintenance easier for mechanics working on board ship. The rotors fold for deck storage. The UAV will be recovered by the newest version of the UAV Common Automatic Recover System and secured to the deck by talons on retractable claws.

The Eagle Eye was selected by Integrated Coast Guard Systems — a joint venture of Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to develop the Coast Guard’s Integrated Deepwater Program, a $17 billion, multiyear plan to replace the service’s older cutters, aircraft and command-and-control systems with new, highly integrated platforms and systems. Bell is a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors for the Eagle Eye program, estimated to be worth more than $1 billion.

As one of the vanguards of the Deepwater modernization, the Eagle Eye is being developed with a primary focus on integration with the eight planned National Security Cutters — the largest of the new ships being developed for Deepwater — according to Robert Dompka, Bell’s director of tiltrotor UAV programs. The Eagle Eye next will be integrated with the 13 existing Famous-class 270-foot medium-endurance cutters, which are fitted with helicopter hangars and the largest flight decks in the Coast Guard, followed by integration with the 12 current Hamilton-class 378-foot high-endurance cutters. As the Famous-class cutters are retired, their Eagle Eye systems will be removed and installed on some of the 25 new Offshore Patrol Cutters to be built as part of Deepwater.

The Eagle Eye in March successfully completed a preliminary design review, the first of eight milestones in its development and testing program. Deepwater program officials approved the proposed plans for the full-scale Eagle Eye. The review demonstrated that Eagle Eye can successfully fulfill 13 of the 14 Coast Guard missions (the exception is the International Ice Patrol), said Robert Leder, spokesman for Bell.

“The Coast Guard is very confident in Bell’s ability to produce the Eagle Eye,” Bashears said, commenting on the success of the preliminary design review and concurring with Bell’s assessment that the system is well within margins for risk, performance, supportability and cost allocations.

The Eagle Eye also must pass its second milestone, a critical design review scheduled in November, before Bell is permitted to move to the third milestone in the process, system development and demonstration.

Bell — which demonstrated a 7/8-scale version of the Eagle Eye in 1998 — is proceeding with detailed design and is building, with its own funds, a full-scale development Eagle Eye scheduled for its first flight in November.

Bell will conduct the flight tests, which will greatly advance the development of the UAV, “saving work, time, and cost for the Coast Guard,” Bashears said. “Bell has done an exceptional job.”

In fiscal year 2004, Congress approved $50 million for UAV programs. The Coast Guard seeks $45 million in 2005. The Coast Guard plans to buy two prototypes in 2005 and six in 2006, under a low-rate production contract with Bell. The two prototypes later will be converted into operational aircraft.

All told, the Coast Guard intends to purchase 69 Eagle Eyes and 50 ground control stations (for at least 46 ships as well as land sites for training and development). Each cutter selected for Eagle Eye installation will receive two of the aircraft, augmenting one manned helicopter.

In the fourth quarter of 2006, the Coast Guard will begin developmental testing, the fourth step in the service’s development and testing process, to determine if the aircraft meets the stringent specifications that were promised by Bell. Operational testing — the fifth step in the process comprising a series of rigorous tests in an operational environment — will be scheduled as the Coast Guard’s new National Security Cutters become available. Eagle Eyes will be installed on cutters in fiscal 2006. The Eagle Eye is expected to enter operational service at the end of fiscal 2007, Dompka said.

Bell has developed its own UAV control system that will be installed on the cutters that operate the Eagle Eye. The system will be compatible with the Navy’s Tactical Control System, developed by Raytheon as the Navy’s universal control system for the service’s UAVs.