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New US Navy Fire Scouts first to have lightweight fuel cells

12th February 2019 - 12:47 GMT | by Richard Thomas in London

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The US Navy has contracted Northrop Grumman for the provision of five additional MQ-8C Fire Scout VTOL UAVs, which will be the first delivered with new fuel cells to improve platform endurance.

Announcing the $55 million contract on 30 January, the US DoD detailed the procurement of five Fire Scout MQ-8C unmanned air systems and two lightweight fuel cells.

Melissa Packwood, Fire Scout programme director told Shephard on 11 February that the platform ‘brings increased speed and payload capacity to maritime operations’ and supports operations ‘by acting as a critical node in distributed lethality conops'.

The current delivery schedule

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Richard Thomas

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Richard Thomas is the Senior Editor, Naval at Shephard Media. Richard joined the company in …

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