Issue Date: December 22, 2003

New portable UAV system going to Iraq with Marines
Corps plans to buy 105 Dragon Eyes

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer

Marines going back to Iraq will have an extra set of eyes in their packs.
The Corps plans to purchase more than 100 backpack-portable unmanned aerial vehicles for use by Marines deploying for occupation duty.

The Dragon Eye UAV can be transported easily to remote areas and deployed within minutes to scope out enemy positions more than six miles away.

Corps officials plan to buy 35 Dragon Eye systems — three air vehicles, a ground control station and one field support kit per system — under an $8 million contract announced Nov. 12.

“Nobody has ever really fielded a small UAV before,” said Lt. Col. Don Bruce, Dragon Eye UAV program manager with Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, Va. “There are small UAVs that are being used … but none of the services have fielded them to the small-unit level like we intend to do.”

Marine officials hope eventually to purchase 323 systems from AeroVironment Inc. of Simi Valley, Calif. — enough vehicles and ground stations to outfit every deployed infantry company and support unit, Corps officials said.

Easton, Md.-based BAI Aerosystems — which also competed for the UAV contract — lost out with its “Tern” UAV because the AeroVironment UAV offered the “best value” to the Corps, Bruce said without offering specifics.

The Dragon Eye is meant to provide small units the capability to conduct up-to-the-minute surveillance of their immediate area, the kind of intelligence typically available only to the upper command echelons. Current UAV systems such as the RQ-2 Pioneer, RQ-1 Predator and RQ-4 Global Hawk are too few and in too high demand to provide responsive intelligence to small units, Bruce said.

“The only thing we’ve given the small-unit commander — the company commander and below — since [the Civil War] is night-vision capability for them to see within their area of responsibility,” Bruce said. “We’ve never given them anything that they own, that they control, that they can see within their area of operations beyond the line of sight. That’s what this asset does.”

The Dragon Eye air vehicle can fit in a pack when disassembled, and its control system is about the size of a laptop computer. Launched from a large device that resembles a slingshot, the UAV flies a preprogrammed route following GPS way points and can transmit full-color video images to a radio transceiver connected to the control station. The UAV also can carry a low-light camera and has been tested with an infrared camera.

Officials from the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab at Quantico, Va., in January sent 20 prototype air vehicles and 10 ground stations with Marines deploying earlier this year for Operation Iraqi Freedom, a real-world test that helped “validate the concept” of a UAV for small unit reconnaissance, officials said.

While the Dragon Eye has proven itself both in the lab and in combat, there were a few hiccups during testing. In one demonstration at a Warfighting Lab-sponsored exercise in Boise, Idaho, a Dragon Eye crashed into a local resident’s front yard minutes after launch. The crash was blamed on a software glitch, which Bruce said has been fixed.

The UAV is intended to be easy to use by any Marine with a little training and will not require the establishment of a new military occupational specialty, Bruce said. Company commanders will select several of their Marines for additional duty as Dragon Eye operators, and Bruce and his team of trainers will travel to the unit to teach a weeklong course.

Systems Command hopes to upgrade the UAV with a variety of payloads, including chemical weapons sensors, acoustic detectors and multispectral imagery cameras, Bruce said.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/stor...ER-2465774.php


Sempers,

Roger