Posted on Fri, Dec. 27, 2002
Unmanned drones will guard U.S. coastlines
BY DEREK ROSE
New York Daily News
NEW YORK - Aerial drones have had starring roles in the war on
terrorism, but a new generation of the flying robots is going to be
deployed to patrol the U.S. coastline for drug smugglers, refugees
and ships in distress.
The Coast Guard is getting up to 70 remote-controlled aircraft that
it can launch from its cutters, extending its eyes for miles.
The first of the $3 million Eagle Eye drones, which take off like a
helicopter but tilt their rotors to fly like a plane, could be on
patrol by 2006.
"They'd be used for maritime homeland defense, fisheries enforcement,
counter-narcotics patrols and possibly for search and rescue," said
Coast Guard Cmdr. John Fitzgerald. "Right now, out at sea, you're
limited to the range of a helicopter."
The Eagle Eye drones can fly up to 220 knots and have a range of 750
nautical miles - 80 percent faster and farther than the Coast Guard's
short-range helicopter, the HH-65 Dolphin.
The drones also can transmit video and infrared images to the cutter
and a Coast Guard command center back on shore.
"So now you've got multiple people seeing the same picture almost
instantaneously, and we can react faster and better and deploy the
right asset at the right time," Fitzgerald said.
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Tom Sperduto, a Coast Guard spokesman based in New York, said the
drones would free up personnel while extending the Coast Guard's
capabilities. "We'll have another set of eyes looking at the dangers
that are going on now," he said.
Known as unmanned aerial vehicles, the drones are part of a $17
billion, 20-year program modernizing the Coast Guard's aging ships
and aircraft.
About half the work will be done in Moorestown, N.J., by Lockheed
Martin, which won the contract in a joint venture with Northrop
Grumman.
The modernization program is called Deepwater because it's aimed at
extending the Coast Guard's reach far offshore.
The Coast Guard aircraft will not be armed, unlike the CIA's Predator
drone that vaporized al-Qaida leaders Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi in
Yemen last month and Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan last year.
As part of Deepwater, the Coast Guard also will acquire seven $35
million Global Hawk spy planes in 2016.
The Northrop Grumman planes are unmanned, just like the Bell
Helicopter Eagle Eyes, but that's where the similarities end. Global
Hawks have the wingspan of a Boeing 737 and fly 12 miles high, double
the altitude of most commercial planes.
Global Hawks are controlled by computer, rather than by a human
operator. One flew from California to Australia last year.
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"They're very, very capable pieces of equipment," said Colin
Robinson, a research analyst for the Center for Defense Information.
"They allow you to monitor large amounts of space, but don't require
an intelligent brain behind it most of the time."
During a typical mission, a Global Hawk could fly 1,200 miles to a
target, linger for 24 hours and then return.
Northrop Grumman spokeswoman Cynthia Curiel said the spy plane's
surveillance photos are so detailed, viewers could identify the size
of a milk container on a picnic table.
"You may not be able to see the dairy name, but you could see that it
is a quart-sized carton," Curiel said.
