MQ-8 Fire Scout Status

Remember when the Navy was claiming that the unmanned helicopter, the MQ-8 Fire Scout, was going to revolutionize naval warfare, providing area wide surveillance, total situational awareness, target detection and tracking, fire control for remote weapons, anti-surface capability, mine countermeasures, and … well … total battlefield dominance?  Let’s check in and see how that’s coming along.
 

The Future of Naval Warfare ... bye, bye

For starters, the Navy has all but abandoned the Fire Scout.

 

The current inventory is 36 aircraft with no additional procurement planned.[1]
 
President’s Budget 2023 included a significant divestment within the MQ-8 program, resulting in the removal of all MQ-8B AVs [ed. AV = Air Vehicle] from inventory and reduction of the MQ-8C AV active operational inventory. Currently there are 11 aircraft dedicated to operational employment with 3 allocated to test and training, an increase of 1 from last year’s Annual Report. Projections for FY24 will increase the operational employment number to 15. The remainder are in a preservation status and are planned to be used for maintenance parts as necessary to support the pool of operational aircraft.[1]

Budget documents from 2024 indicate that the Fire Scout is being phased out completely.
 

Operational employment of the MQ-8C will end in Q4 FY2024 and sundown will be completed by Q4 FY2026.[2]

Instead of having hundreds of Fire Scouts roaming the battlefield and dominating our enemies, as promised, the Navy is down to around a dozen, which are being phased out, and appears to have lost interest in the platform.
 
With the near abandonment of the Fire Scout as context, there are, nominally, three variations (increments, as the Navy terms it) of Fire Scout in the works:
 

• Endurance Baseline Increment – imaging EO/IR sensor and laser range finder and designator
• SUW Increment – maritime search radar
• Mine Countermeasure Increment – COBRA near shore mine detection

 
How is testing coming along?  DOT&E states,
 

The Navy has yet to complete land-based testing necessary to characterize radar performance against maritime targets.[1]

Conclusion
 
It seems that the Navy has all but abandoned the Fire Scout, presumably having realized that it has no effective use case in combat.  Of course, ComNavOps has been saying this since the first MQ-8 appeared.  Nice of the Navy to finally catch up.
 
Like the LCS, Zumwalt, and others, the Fire Scout platform has gone from being the future of naval warfare to an afterthought in a remarkably short period of time.
 
 
 
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[1]Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, FY2023 Annual Report, Jan 2024,
 
[2]Flight Global website, “US Navy’s MQ-8C Fire Scouts fly into retirement just two years after entering operational service”, Jan Tegler, 29-May-2024,
https://www.flightglobal.com/helicopters/us-navys-mq-8c-fire-scouts-fly-into-retirement-just-two-years-after-entering-operational-service/158500.article