Insitu, Inc., BINGEN, Wash: The Boeing Company and Insitu, Inc. announced today that the ScanEagle unmanned aircraft (UA) has made over 700 successful ship-board recoveries on US Navy vessels. ScanEagle has also logged over 50,000 flight hours since being deployed in 2004, including over 11,000 hours with the US Navy.
“These two milestones are important for ScanEagle,” commented Steve Nordlund, Insitu Vice President of Business Development and Program Management. “700 shipboard recoveries and over 50,000 flight hours demonstrate that ScanEagle is an operationally mature platform. We look forward to continually supporting our warfighters with this system,” Nordlund concluded.
ScanEagle is designed to achieve safe and autonomous launches and recoveries over land and aboard ships — using no runways and no nets. The unique and highly reliable recovery system allows operators to quickly turnaround ScanEagle for its next mission in a matter of minutes.
“The versatility of the ScanEagle system is what makes it so successful when deployed with the USN. We can operate from many different ships, in extreme weather and anywhere in the world the USN needs to go without the risk of trying to use a net to recover a flying unmanned vehicle. Having been a ScanEagle lead on land based and maritime deployments, I can say the ScanEagle UAS has proven to be uniquely suited to the USN missions,” said John Nicholson, Boeing ScanEagle lead aboard the USS Oak Hill and Saipan.
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ScanEagle's SuperWedge launcher and SkyHook retrieval system are compact and transportable, designed to enable persistent surveillance with a small operational footprint, on land or at sea.
SkyHook's unique patented retrieval technology provides runway-independent, netless recovery for ScanEagle. The aircraft pilots itself autonomously to catch the rope hanging from the SkyHook's boom. A wingtip hook snags the rope quickly, cleanly, and reliably. Once snagged, the aircraft is safely lowered and stowed.
Together, SkyHook and SuperWedge make ScanEagle available in challenging mission environments that are off-limits to other unmanned aircraft systems. ScanEagle operates autonomously over the ocean, from small and unprepared fields, in rugged terrain, in high winds, crosswinds, and significant precipitation, reliably and repeatedly.
ScanEagle is developed in partnership with The Boeing Company and is currently deployed on the USNS Stockham, USS Whidbey Island, and the USS Carter Hall, with more ship instalments to come in the future. In addition the platform is used to provide services for the US Marine Corps and Australian Defence Force.
Insitu, located in Bingen, Washington, designs, develops, and manufactures unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for commercial and military applications. Insitu introduced the first unmanned aircraft (UA) to cross the Atlantic Ocean and has partnered with Boeing to develop ScanEagle and Fugro Airborne Surveys to develop GeoRanger.
A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is one of the world's largest space and defense businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a $32.4 billion business with 72,000 employees worldwide.
