page_title: Boeing Insitu ScanEagle
section_title: Improvements
hierarchical_section_title: Boeing Insitu ScanEagle / Design and development / Improvements
caption_attribution_description: AL ASAD, Iraq--ScanEagle UAV sits on the catapult prior to launch. A small detachment of Marines and civilians is deployed here to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in western Iraq. The detachment is from Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 2, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Cherry Point, North Carolina. ScanEagle weighs approximately 40 pounds and has a 10-foot wingspan. The aircraft operates with a small engine, requiring a small amount fuel. Its 4-foot frame can remain airborne for more than 10 hours. Each drone is launched using a catapult system, which makes it runway independent and perfect for forward operating forces.
context_page_description: The Boeing Insitu ScanEagle is a small, long-endurance, low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle built by Insitu, a subsidiary of Boeing, and is used for reconnaissance. The ScanEagle was designed by Insitu based on the Insitu SeaScan, a commercial UAV that was intended for fish-spotting. The ScanEagle continues to receive improvements through upgrades and changes.
context_section_description: On 18 March 2008, Boeing, with ImSAR and Insitu successfully flight-tested a ScanEagle with ImSAR's NanoSAR A radar mounted aboard.  The ImSAR NanoSAR is the world's smallest Synthetic Aperture Radar, weighs 3.5 lb (1.6 kg) and is 100 cubic inches (1.6 litres) in volume.  It is designed to provide high quality real-time ground imaging through adverse weather conditions or other battlefield obscurants.
  In 2009, Insitu announced the NightEagle, a modified ScanEagle Block E with an infrared camera for night operations.
  In August 2010, Boeing announced plans to control ScanEagles from control stations on E-3A AWACS aircraft and on the V-22.
  In July 2011, a team of two ScanEagles and another UAV cooperated to search and navigate a mountain area autonomously.
  Insitu introduced an improved ScanEagle 2 variant in October 2014 that has a new purpose-built heavy-fuel engine for increased reliability, which increases electrical power but decreases endurance to 16 hours.  It also has a larger nose to carry day and night sensors at the same time, an increased payload, and heavier empty and max take-off weights; wingspan, service ceiling, and cruise and top speed remain the same.  Other upgrades include a fully digital video system, a better navigation system, Ethernet-based architecture and reduced Electronic Magnetic Interference (EMI), and a new ground control station while using the same launcher and skyhook recovery system.  The ScanEagle 2 was made to appeal to the growing commercial UAV market and orders will start being taken in 2015, either new built or as an upgrade for existing ScanEagle aircraft.
  In 2014, Insitu began development of the Flying Launch and Recovery System (FLARES), a system designed to launch and recover the ScanEagle without the need to transport and assemble the launch catapult and recovery crane.  It consists of second, quadrotor UAV that carries the ScanEagle vertically and releases it into forward flight.  For recovery, the quadrotor hovers trailing a cable that it captures, as it would the cable from the SkyHook crane.  FLARES incorporates the VTOL advantages of launch and recovery in confined areas, as well as eliminating the rail and crane equipment, with the flying efficiency of a fixed-wing body.  Demonstrations of the system took place from late 2014 to mid-2015, and low-rate production is scheduled for late 2016.
  In November 2015, a Royal Australian Navy ScanEagle tested Sentient Vision Systems’s ViDAR optical detection system, turning the UAV into a broad area maritime surveillance (BAMS) asset capable of covering up to 80 times more area in a single sortie than is possible with standard cameras.  The self-contained ViDAR system consists of high-resolution digital video cameras and software that analyses image feed and autonomously detects, tracks, and photographs each contact with a 180-degree pan.  It can be incorporated into the ScanEagle as two fuselage slices, ahead of and behind the wing, without affecting performance.  The ViDAR can cover an area greater than 13,000 square nautical miles (17,000 sq mi; 45,000 km²) over a 12-hour mission, and detected small and large surface, air, and even submerged targets during the demonstration.
  The Scaneagle 3 is reportedly ITAR-free, meaning that it can be sold without a US Government weapons export licence.
caption: A ScanEagle in its catapult launcher
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