Companies announce larger unmanned helicopter
By Evan Sweetman
May 03, 2010
Northrop Grumman and Bell Helicopter announced today that they have designed an unmanned helicopter that would be capable of carrying five times more payload than the Fire Scout helicopters Northrop has sold to the U.S. Navy.
The aircraft, dubbed the Fire-X, will be based on the commercially available Bell 407 and will use the Fire Scout’s flight-management system, the companies said.
The first role of this system is cargo,” said Michael Fuqua, Northrop Grumman’s director of business development for tactical unmanned systems. “It’s about getting Humvees off the road in dangerous areas.” He also said the new craft could carry ISR sensors.
The development team expects to have the aircraft flying by the end of the year, Fuqua said. The team completed a design review in late April, said Martin Peryea, director of Bell’s special programs unit called XworX.
Combining the two systems was not as complicated as we thought it was going to be,” Peryea said.
Northrop engineers designed the system to maintain the same modular capability of the Fire Scout, said Fuqua.

“We see Fire-X like Fire Scout, where we can put any sensor on it and fly it,” he said. “The only difference is that Fire Scout has a 600 pound payload where Fire-X has a 3000 pound payload.”