Eagle Eye UAV passes critical milestone

Date: 13 Apr 2004

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The Bell Helicopter Eagle Eye VTOL UAV passed a critical milestone recently within the U.S. Coast Guard’s Integrated Deepwater System programme, with the highly successful completion of its Preliminary Design Review (PDR), a required deliverable to proceed to the next stage of the contract.

The PDR demonstrated that Eagle Eye will successfully fulfill the U. S. Coast Guard missions, said Bell. In meeting these mission requirements, it added, the system is well within margins for risk, performance, supportability and cost allocations.

The preliminary design of the Eagle Eye is based on the successful demonstrator that flew over 90 hours, and achieved 200 knots in level cruise whilst carrying 210 pounds of payload at 7/8 the scale of the planned production version.

Bell Helicopter is a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin, a partner in Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

In June 2002, the U.S. Coast Guard awarded the Integrated Deepwater System contract to ICGS. Deepwater is a critical multi-year programme to modernise and replace aging ships and aircraft, and improve or replace command and control and logistics systems. ICGS announced a year ago that the Bell Eagle Eye was selected for the VUAV portion of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Integrated Deepwater System contract.