U.S. Coast Guard Orders ScanEagle Surveillance Service

The U.S. Coast Guard will deploy the Insitu ScanEagle small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) from one of its Legend-class national security cutters (NSCs), the parties announced. Under a service agreement, Insitu will operate the catapult-launched ScanEagle for a year or more aboard the Stratton, a cutter stationed in Alameda, Calif., beginning in 2017.

The Coast Guard procured the ScanEagle service through a pre-existing contract facility managed by the Naval Air Systems Command. Awarded on June 24, the $4.5 million task order includes operation, integration, maintenance and spares of the ScanEagle system for one year. The order is potentially worth $12.3 million, including options for deploying the system and providing data for up to three additional years. The Coast Guard will own the surveillance data the ScanEagle collects.

“Insitu is proud to be the first UAS ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] service provider in support of the Coast Guard,” said Ryan Hartman, Insitu president and CEO. “ScanEagle’s unparalleled record of operations at sea and proven ability to give operators eyes over the horizon will go far in support of the Coast Guard’s unique mission sets.”

The Coast Guard has long been interested in using unmanned aircraft. In the late 1990s, it planned to acquire 69 Bell Eagle Eye unmanned tiltrotors to operate from the NSCs, but it scrapped the plan in 2007 over cost. The service demonstrated the use of the small, fixed-wing ScanEagle from the Stratton off the California coast in August 2012. A ScanEagle it flew from the cutter Bertholf in partnership with the U.S. Navy helped stop a drug-running operation off the west coast of Central America in May 2013.

Current Coast Guard plans call for augmenting its aviation fleet “with cutter-based, low-altitude small UAS to provide tactical, on-demand capability and with land-based, mid-altitude UAS to provide strategic, wide-area surveillance.” The service said “other UAS major acquisition programs remain in the pre-acquisition phase due to ongoing developmental technology challenges, domestic policy limitations and budgetary constraints.”

The Coast Guard plans to acquire eight NSCs; five have entered service and a sixth will be delivered later this year. The ships are 418 feet long with a crew of 148, a range of 12,000 nm and endurance for 60- to 90-day patrols. On March 4, the Coast Guard and Ingalls Shipbuilding authenticated the keel to mark the beginning of construction of the seventh NSC—the Kimball—at Ingalls’ shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. The service expects delivery of the eighth NSC, Midgett, in 2019.