The main difference between the ground stations and those aboard ship is that the shipboard control is plugged into the ship's communication network while the ground control station uses a Northrop Grumman communication system, Roberts says. Fire Scout's shipboard control station is housed in a room where the separate target illumination radar (STIR) was located and communicates directly with the ship’s air traffic control via the internal communications system, while the ground segment uses a radio to communicate with air traffic control, Roberts says.The Fire Scout uses its FLIR Systems BRITE Star II electro-optic/infrared laser designator payload to provide reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition at sea, Roberts says.The sensor played a prominent role in the first ever drug interdiction by the USS McInerney during a recent deployment in the eastern Pacific, according to a Northrop Grumman release. "During a routine Fire Scout training flight off the ship, the sensor detected and acquired a narcotics 'go-fast' boat. Fire Scout tracked the boat covertly for several hours, feeding real-time video back to the McInerney. Eventually, a U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement attachment aboard the ship was able to move in on the drug traffickers, seizing approximately 60 kilograms of cocaine.""Fire Scout is currently in the flight test portion of the system development and demonstration (SDD) phase of the program, which is taking place at the Webster Field annex of Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md.," says Brooks McKinney, spokesperson for Northrop Grumman. "SDD is scheduled to end at the end of this calendar year. A deployment is planned in early 2011. A decision on full rate production is expected in March 2011.The Fire Scout payload operator controls the different functions of the sensors such as a laser range finder and communicates the intelligence through the ship via radio communication and other communication systems with ground forces, Navy ships, and the Coast Guard, Roberts says.The most difficult task in flying an autonomous, unmanned helicopter at sea is landing the aircraft on a windy day aboard a moving target, Roberts says. At the end of its mission it will hover behind the ship, wait for a signal from the ship to land and use its instruments to determine the speed of the ship and its pitch/roll and position in the water to make a proper deck landing, he adds.Fire Scout uses a system called the UAV common automatic recovery system (UCARS) from Sierra Nevada Corp. in Sparks, Nev., that shoots "harpoons" into holes on a 7-foot diameter location on the deck, he continues. Once the harpoons are engaged and the deck sensors pick up the weight of the aircraft, crew members come out and chain it down. The entire landing is monitored from the control station in case any of the steps for landing -- harpoon or weight sensors -- malfunction, the landing can be aborted, Roberts says.COTS integration on the Fire Scout control stationThe Fire Scout control station uses COTS electronics in the control stations, Roberts says. For the control computer they use a Themis Computer RES-32 system running Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system, he adds.The Themis RES-32s comes in a three rack unit chassis uses the Sun Microsystems 1.28GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processor ad have a XVR-1200 high performance graphics card, enabling 3-D graphics performance, Themis officials say. The RES-32s can be easily expanded through the addition of Sun or other commercially available, off the shelf networking cards, I/O, peripherals and other value-added, company officials say.The racks are from 901D in Tallman, N.Y., and are qualified to MIL-STD 901D and MIL-STD 810, Roberts says. The software and protocols follow STANAG 4586, which is a NATO standard enabling NATO member nations to participate in military operations with their own unmanned systems sharing UAV-generated intelligence with each other, Roberts says.Roberts also says that his team is looking at Ethernet now and in the long term because it is ubiquitous and makes integration a lot easier, he adds.Like any integrator of COTS electronics Fire Scout engineers must deal with obsolescence management, Roberts says. If a product or component goes obsolete, vendors typically set up a notification and "we then go out and look for an equivalent part from the same vendor or from a different supplier," Roberts says.The lesson some vendors continue to "learn the hard way" is that they need to make their parts backwards compatible, Roberts says. Many times a part is discontinued and new one is offered without backwards compatibility, he adds.When that happens, "we initiate a trade study and then put it up for competition," Roberts continues.Currently there are separate ground control stations for each UAV, Walby says. They are closed systems -- for example a Fire Scout GCS only works with a Fire Scout UAV and so on, he adds.There are also differences within each platform depending on the end user, Walby says. For example NASA has a Global Hawk variant that has different requirements than the Air Force and these modifications are made in the software programs, he continues. The same is true for the European version of the Global Hawk -- the EuroHawk, Walby notes.Human factorsThe operators have a lot of input when it comes to designing the next-generation control stations, Roberts says. One of the recommendations is for a larger screen that replaces the two they use now on the Fire Scout -- the aircraft operator and mission payload operator each have two screens, Roberts says. It will be a large 16 by 9 screen aspect ratio high-resolution display, he adds."One request that I’ve heard a lot" is to have the screens and windows configurations more flexible to accommodate the individual tastes of each operator, Roberts says. In the past the services would mandate one fixed display configuration for every operator and platform, which benefits training but cuts down on the efficiency of the operators, who work better if they can customize their display configuration to their individual requirements, he explains.Many of the students coming out of school and boot camp are used to the flexibility of modern personal computers and video games and are familiar with machines that provide that, Roberts says.Man-portable UAV control stationsControllers for small, man-portable UAVs are simple, easy to use systems that go from a system packed in a rucksack on the warfighter's back to an operable system in five minutes, says Scott Newbern, program manager for Aerovironment in Simi Valley, Calif.