Alliant Techsystems RQ-6 Outrider - Fort Huachuca, Arizona
Posted by: BruceS
N 31° 33.719 W 110° 20.371
12R E 562681 N 3492075
Unmanned tactical reconnaissance aerial vehicle on display at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
Waymark Code: WMHEEX
Location: Arizona, United States
Date Posted: 06/30/2013
Views: 11
Text of plaque:
Alliant Techsystems RQ-6 Outrider
In 1996 the Mi-Tex Hellfox UAV, which had first flown in December 1995, was selected to fulfill a joint U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps TUAV (Tactical UAV) requirement for a short-range battlefield surveillance and target acquisition UAV. In May of that year, Alliant Techsystems was awarded an ACTD (Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration) contract to develop the Outrider TUA system with an air vehicle based on the Hellfox design. However, the Outrider program was troubled from the beginning and the first flight did not occur until March 1997. The major reason for the delay was the necessity to redesign the fuselage from composite to aluminum construction, after it was discovered that the former design provided insufficient shielding of the avionics in a ship-board EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) environment. The final design, which also used a more powerful engine, first flew in November 1997. Test and development somewhat accelerated in 1998, and in April that year the U.S. Army received its first complete Outrider system for training and evaluation. The Outrider flew only once at Ft. Huachuca. In October 1998 the Navy and Marine Corps left the program because of poor cost and performance data and began to look at a VTOL alternative. In early 1999, the Outrider UAV was officially designated as RQ-6A.
The protracted development of the Outrider prompted the U.S. Army to look at alternatives. In 1999, the Army conducted a comparative system capability demonstration between the RQ-6A and the AAI RQ-7A Shadow 200 UAS. In the end, the latter proved better suited to fulfill the Army's TUAV requirements, and Outrider was finally cancelled in late 1999. A total of 20 Outrider UAVs had been built, 10 of which were of the final RQ-6A design.