Four MQ-8C Fire Scouts the Navy was retiring are flying again, this time as Army test aircraft. The unmanned helicopters went to the Army’s Redstone Test Center in Alabama, which finished ground testing in August and began flight tests at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, and at Redstone Arsenal.
Instead of buying new aircraft to carry Army sensor packages aloft, the test center took over airframes the Navy no longer needed. The Navy says the swap saved the Army just over $70 million in procurement.
The timeline comes from the Navy’s Multi-Mission Tactical UAS program office, PMA-266, in a story by Megan Wasel posted to DVIDS on Oct. 22. It describes the Army’s plan to use the MQ-8C as a captive-carry testbed, meaning the helicopter carries a sensor under test through real flight conditions so engineers can collect data on it.
From divestment to a second job
At the direction of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV N98), the Navy began divesting the MQ-8C in February 2024, with a final sundown scheduled by the end of fiscal year 2026, according to the PMA-266 story. The program office was roughly 60% through transferring aircraft, mobile control systems and support equipment to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group in Tucson, Ariz., when the Army asked about taking some of them.
That request reached PMA-266 in November 2024. It asked whether the Fire Scout could serve as a captive-carry testbed for the Redstone Test Center, a subordinate organization of the Army Test and Evaluation Command at Redstone Arsenal. By December, the teams had scheduled a site visit to Point Mugu, Calif., to evaluate the aircraft and its mission control systems.
In January 2025, the test center formally asked OPNAV N98’s Air Warfare Division for four MQ-8C aircraft, two Mobile Mission Control Systems, spare engines and support equipment. The Navy approved the request in May 2025, and by July all four aircraft, both control systems and the support equipment had been delivered to Redstone Arsenal, the story says.
The missing radios
The aircraft arrived before everything needed to fly them did. Communications security equipment, including radios, transponders and modems, had already been returned to Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support for common stock earlier in the divestment. PMA-266 worked with NAVSUP to get it back, and after a year of negotiations the final assets reached Redstone Arsenal in July 2026.
Chief Warrant Officer 4 Taylor Kiel, test director and experimental test pilot with the test center’s Aviation Flight Test Directorate, described the starting point.
“Considering where we started—having zero experience with these systems—it’s quite remarkable what has been accomplished. We are certainly thankful for the many people across various organizations that helped us along the way.”
The Navy story says the effort saved the Army just over $70 million in procurement costs, with further savings in research, development, test and evaluation, flight hours, data collection, contracts, asset sourcing and manpower. It gives no figures for those other savings. The Aviationist, which reported the transfer on Oct. 27, described the procurement savings as expected rather than already realized.
The Fire Scout’s Navy record
The MQ-8C is the larger Fire Scout, built by Northrop Grumman on the commercial Bell 407 airframe, according to The Aviationist; the earlier RQ-8A and MQ-8B used the Schweizer 330. The outlet notes the MQ-8C reached initial operational capability in 2019, that the Navy once planned to buy 38 of them, mainly for Littoral Combat Ships, and that NAVAIR credits it with up to 12 hours on station depending on payload.
Col. Leigh Irwin, the PMA-266 program manager, framed the transfer in acquisition terms. “Repurposing these MQ-8C assets from storage to active testing is a major acquisition win for both services, demonstrating how we can supercharge existing capabilities and increase acquisition velocity to support joint operations,” Irwin said in the Navy story.
The program office says the transition was completed and flight tests begun within 14 months. The Navy had scheduled the MQ-8C’s final sundown for the end of fiscal year 2026; four of its airframes have a second job at Redstone instead.