Thursday, July 14, 2011

Fire Scout Early Fielding Report


The Salamander underground comes through. The report to Congress on Fire Scout referenced earlier this week can be found here.

You have to skip the first 11 pages of letters to Congressmen and Senators to get to the meat. Head to the link above, give it a read and then come back.

Let's discuss. Here are my Top-3.

1.
Since Milestone C, the program has conducted extensive flight testing collecting 1,500 MQ-8B flight hours between March 2007 and March 2011. Contractor developmental test pilots executing developmental test plans flew 1,250 of those hours. These developmental tests were not operationally realistic, and yielded little insight into the operational effectiveness of the system. The tests were conducted in a controlled environment with no opposing forces and at whatever pace was needed to collect required engineering data. No tests were conducted in adverse weather or with any form of electronic combat. Navy operators flew the remaining 250 hours in a littoral environment, taking advantage of shipping that happened into the field of observation and with no ground truth (time, space, position information) available.
2.
There are limited data from which to assess the reliability, maintainability, and availability of the system. The contractor does not use standard Navy maintenance procedures, tools, and tracking and reporting software while maintaining the systems used during developmental test. While the aviation detachment aboard the USS Halyburton does follow standard Navy maintenance practices, the detachment includes additional personnel and contractor technical representatives that will not be present once the Navy fields the system.
3.
The ground control station user interface software generates actions unrelated to operator actions or intent. As an example, during flight, if an operator deletes a target from the target list, it results in a lost link that requires execution of the emergency procedure to regain control of the air vehicle. In one recently discovered anomaly, the space bar on the keyboard acts like an “Enter” key for the currently selected window. Inadvertently hitting the space bar activates the selection in that window. Operators aboard the USS Halyburton discovered this anomaly when the air vehicle operator’s headset cord inadvertently hit the space bar and activated the self destruct countdown timer.
... and we deployed it to Libya.

What are your Top-3?

16 comments:

Byron said...

Somewhere I've got a picture tucked away of myself and several co-workers standing next to the first Firescout aboard the old McInerney (now Pakinerney of the Pakistani Navy). It was a cute little thing, sorta like something you'd buy in a high dollar hobby store, except on sterioids.

Wonder which Admirals/Congresscritter is making big bucks off of this flying turd?
FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!!

Anonymous said...

1- It was DT, it wasn't supposed to be OT.  Combat isn't desired during DT.
2- There are almost always contractor personnel involved in DT that won't be present when fielded, as DT isn't OT.
3- You should write up as a Part II deficiency, and submit it to the test team.  Do everyone a favor and make it a standard 5 part paragraph though.  They'll make the HUGE change to not have the spacebar act as "enter" in the self destruct window so that problem will be solved.

CDR Salamander said...

Awwww, look at the cute little hedgehog, all rolled up in a ball making cute little squeeks.  ;)

sid said...

Doh! I hit the spacebar!

Gotta love COTS.

Mike M. said...

1.  It's a UAV.  Emergency deployment is to be expected of any ISR system, especially unmanned ones.  Ask the J-STARS, Predator, USAF Global Hawk, and Navy BAMS-D teams about it.
2.  Accepted.
3.  No, it's a Part I deficiency.  And a 6-part paragraph.  As well as a particularly wretched design that never should have seen the light of day.

Aubrey said...

"<span>Operators aboard the USS Halyburton discovered this anomaly when the air vehicle operator’s headset cord <span>inadvertently hit the space bar and activated the self destruct countdown timer</span>."</span>
<span></span>
<span></span>
<span>Hmm...Luke Sywalker didn't actually blow up the Deathstar, some E2 down in the commissary hit the spacebar while typing an email and *BANG*</span>

SouthernAP said...

Late Launches? Not good when your operating in the Littorials.

"Get that bird up." -USS NeverMissile CO
"Yes Sir!" -TAO
"Sir, we are having problems with the APN-XXX datalink." -TAO
"Get it fixed our we going to canx'ed the launch cause of running room."-CO
"Any second now."-MX of HSL
<earth>
"What the )#(*$%#..."-CO
"Sir, we have flooding being reported forward of frame 5 on deck 5 due to a hole in the hull."-OOD
"Sir this is the gator we have run aground on that sandbar off bar-el-ibabi"-Gator</earth>

SouthernAP said...

Datalink droppings happen even over on the manned sided of carrier aviation. Usually due to the older age of the component or bad coding. However, the back up was usually a system reset in case of NTDS or MIDS, if it was part of the landing portion then we had to worry about the capabilities of the aircrew. What was even harder was trying to successfully troubleshoot a datalink problem without inducing another issue in the rest of the wing.  

"These developmental tests were not operationally realistic, and yielded little insight into the operational effectiveness of the system. The tests were conducted in a controlled environment with no opposing forces...No tests were conducted in adverse weather or with any form of electronic combat. Navy operators flew the remaining 250 hours in a littoral environment, taking advantage of shipping that happened into the field of observation and with no ground truth (time, space, position information) available."

This nugget is good too. So what it is telling me that they did all this testing strictly to see if the dang thing could take off and land from the ship in calm weather in a sea state of 2 or less. Then once that was proven they tried to see if they could transmit data back to the ship. There was no attempt to see if operation of other assets like the SLQ-32 or an offensive EW system like ALQ-99 or even a defensive EW asset like ALQ-165 could screw with the aircraft operating and talking to its GCS. So again the question comes up what happens in a heavy EW enviroment and this thing flips over dives towards the deck cause it is getting "bad" data due to the EW war being fought around it?

"There are limited data from which to assess the reliability, maintainability, and availability of the system. The contractor does not use standard Navy maintenance procedures, tools, and tracking and reporting software while maintaining the systems used during developmental test. While the aviation detachment aboard the USS Halyburton does follow standard Navy maintenance practices, the detachment includes additional personnel and contractor technical representatives that will not be present once the Navy fields the system."

This is another good one. Because this one tells me that we have no way to adequately compare via the NAMP (CNAFINST 4790.2A) metrics on what the true relibility of the components are. Add in we have no way to track the man hour metrics reliable because the unit was operating with additional personnel that won't be present after the IOC.

Anonymous said...

The report mentions the Afgan deployment.  Will be interesting to see what you think about Fire Scout once you read about its performance there.

SouthernAP said...

Well if it can't maintain a datalink to transmit data in a stable enviroment like out to sea within line-of-sight of homeplate and it can't do the same thing ashore in Maryland over Pax River (where Webster Field is located). I would hate to see how it will be able to maintain the ability to transmit data in hilly terrian like the 'Stan. I can only imagine there might be a few controlled flights into ground or even data feed loss due to loss of datalink then this thing's goose is cooked and it should be taken back to either Nellis, Edwards, Pax, or even Fallon with further revisions before being reintroduced to the fleet.

Anonymous said...

"Emergency deployment is to be expected"  If it's expected, it isn't an emergency.  Welcome to DT, it's where designs get refined and spec compliance is verified, unfortunately people want better, faster, cheaper; pick any two.

MR T's Haircut said...

couple of things.. when the conops are developed for the SOW (statment of work), the Contractor goes pretty softball and metrics that are to be delivered.   Usually very simple canned scenarios.  The SOW has to be approved before contract is awarded, so Big Navy knew the minimal metrics in the SOW were eithered delivered or not.  Often the Customer, (big Navy) can decide to waive the metrics.  I wonder if that did not happen here?

I was a former Operational Test Crewman in my Enlisted Aircrew life, and we had to exhaustively punch every key stroke and mode of operation to create unknowns and figure out how to correct them to make them knowns and develop a checklist to operate and use tactically.  Not sure where the Navy OTD was in this whole arena.

Data links..  there are MANY MANY redundincies in UAS/RPA world.. DGPS and ATOL are common.  UHF, VHF, and SATCOMM are standard.  it only gets hard when the Navy introduces flag level thinking into the plan.. and the middle guys are afraid to tell the Flags what the actual limitations are to the platform.. again a product of helium arm..

Anonymous said...

Perhaps it's an upgraded version?  Can't talk about the report, but the operators have given it high marks.

Aubrey said...

Getting top billing now:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/18/single-key-stroke-nearly-leads-unmanned-navy-copter-to-self-destruct/

Aubrey said...

Sorry - above was front page on Fax's website today (7/18)

Anonymous said...

A more balanced story here:  http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/07/navy-firescout-report-outlines-tech-glitches-071811/

"Fire Scout is exceeding its 300 flight-hour-per-month goal in Afghanistan; has racked up 650 hours since May; and provided real-time, full-motion video support to troops in the field while being reliable and maintainable"