NATO has suffered its first apparent combat casualty of the three-month-old war in Libya. And it's a robot.

Wing Cmdr. Mike Bracken said the alliance lost contact with the unmanned rotorcraft this morning. "This drone helicopter was performing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over Libya to monitor pro-Gadhafi forces threatening the civilian population," Bracken said.

Libyan state TV showed wreckage of the drone and claimed it was from a manned Apache gunship Gadhafi's forces had shot down 85 miles east of Tripoli. But the debris' color, shape and markings prove it was from an MQ-8 Fire Scout, a so-called "Vertical-Takeoff Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" built by Northrop Grumman.

The U.S. Air Force has been flying fixed-wing Predator and Global Hawk drones over Libya since April and March, respectively. But this is the first we've heard about drone choppers.

As with the stealth chopper(s) used in the Osama Bin Laden raid last month, a crashed aircraft has opened a window into previously unreported military tactics.

The U.S. Navy is the only known user of the surveillance-optimized Fire Scout, although U.S. Special Operations Command uses the somewhat-similar Hummingbird robocopter, built by Boeing.

The Navy has ambitions to buy nearly 200 MQ-8s, but at the moment the sailing branch uses just a handful of the $10-million, 24 foot-long, pilotless choppers for "operational testing" in combat zones.

One Fire Scout assisted the frigate USS *McInerney *in a drug bust off Latin America last year. Two sailed with the frigate USS *Halyburton *on a counter-piracy patrol earlier this year. The Navy also sent three MQ-8s to scout for insurgents in northern Afghanistan. Now we can add Libya to the 'bot's fast-expanding resume.

It's not clear how many MQ-8s are in North Africa, or how the Navy is using them. They could be land-based like those in Afghanistan. More likely, the robocopters are flying from a naval vessel, just like the U.K.'s Apache gunships and France's Tiger choppers.

It's also not clear what advantage the Fire Scouts enjoy over the other surveillance assets spying on Libya.

In any event, the revelation of the MQ-8's Libya mission comes at difficult time for its builder, Northrop Grumman. The Fire Scout was originally meant to fly from the Navy's shore-hugging Littoral Combat Ships, but delays in building the troubled vessels disrupted production plans for the robocopter fleet. A downed aircraft is never good PR, but at least Northrop can take comfort in knowing the Navy is finding plenty of alternate uses for the 'bot while it awaits LCS.

The presence of the Fire Scout over Libya also underscores an important point raised by outgoing U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a speech two weeks ago. Gates criticized NATO nations for "sitting on the sidelines" while America does the heavy lifting in Libya and Afghanistan.

That's especially true when it comes to surveillance, particularly unmanned surveillance. The Pentagon provides NATO's robots, because when it comes to other NATO nations, "the military capabilities simply aren't there," Gates said.

We're sure the U.S. Navy wouldn't mind someone else putting their precious, robotic spy copters in harm's way, for a change.

*Photo: Navy

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