With as many as 22 Scan Eagles in the air at any given time, according to Boeing, the U.S. The tiny drone is compatible with Navy destroyers, amphibious ships and patrol boats and is also launched by the Ponce, the Navy's floating Persian Gulf staging base for minehunters, boats and Special Operations Forces. But carriers do not routinely deploy the catapult and tower-mounted hook for launching and landing Scan Eagles, as they could interfere with regular flight ops.īut that doesn't mean the Scan Eagle couldn't have come from the sea. It's true the Americans have a flattop in the region: the USS John C. Iranian commander Fadavi said the downed Scan Eagle had been launched by a U.S. The Air Force and Boeing-Insitu didn't hesitate to show me around their Scan Eagle unit in Afghanistan. It was originally designed to help fishermen track schools of tuna and, in its standard model, contains no secret technology. It navigates autonomously following pre-programmed GPS waypoints for up to 24 hours, but generally stays within 100 miles of its operators so that it can relay video via line-of-sight radio.Īfter the ubiquitous, hand-thrown Raven, the Scan Eagle is one of the most common drones in the world, (.pdf) with more than 1,000 in use by military and scientific agencies.
Just four feet long, the camera-equipped Scan Eagle flies low and slow – barely 80 miles per hour. The boomerang-shaped 'bots patrol the perimeter of Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. A Scan Eagle kept tabs on the cargo ship Maersk Alabama after pirates kidnapped the vessel's captain in 2009.
Scan Eagles have flown recon for Navy SEAL raids in Somalia.
Instead, it's more of a tactical system meant to extend the visual range of ships, commando forces and air base defenders. The diminutive Scan Eagle, however, is ill-suited to that kind of strategic reconnaissance. Likewise, it's widely believed the Afghanistan-based Sentinel was also gathering data on Iranian nuclear enrichment when it went down.
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