An MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle assigned to Heli­copter Sea Com­bat Squadron 23 crashed dur­ing a rou­tine train­ing flight at Naval Base Ven­tu­ra Coun­ty Point Mugu on 14 August, base offi­cials said.

The MQ-8B Fire Scout – a drone heli­copter – was in flight around 12:21 p.m. when one of its main rotors clipped a build­ing at the air sta­tion. The crash caused super­fi­cial dam­age to the build­ing and no injuries were report­ed, accord­ing to a news release from Naval Base Ven­tu­ra County.

The Fire Scout is the Navy’s only unmanned air­craft to oper­ate on land and at sea. The Fire Scout is a ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing UAV capa­ble of car­ry­ing out sur­veil­lance, track­ing and tar­get­ing missions.

The Navy has inte­grat­ed a mul­ti-mode mar­itime radar on MQ-8B and test­ed an onboard weapons capa­bil­i­ty, the Advanced Pre­ci­sion Kill Weapon Sys­tem (APKWS). The MQ-8B Fire Scout has also demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to oper­ate con­cur­rent­ly with oth­er manned air­craft while oper­at­ing at sea.