A US Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter has for the first time made an autonomously controlled test flight with two unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) on board.
The magazine Flight Global reported that the helicopter’s test flight was conducted by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on 1 November, but disclosed eight days later.
The news outlet added that the US military has previously flown autonomous UH-60s, but that the latest test is “a further step by the army in evaluating how autonomy fits within its future flight capabilities”.
US Army Soldiers conduct rappel training from a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter at Fort Bliss, Texas, Aug. 23, 2016.
This was echoed by DARPA, which explained that the flight, conducted at the Yuma Proving Ground in the Arizona Desert, was part of the US Army’s efforts to assess “how autonomous UH-60s might drop off, protect and resupply troops”.
According to DARPA, the 1 November testing saw the UH-60A for the first time fly an autonomous resupply mission and it was also the first time that the helicopter autonomously touched down on “an unimproved landing zone”.
Under the scenario of the drills that were carried out during the test flight, the pilotless Black Hawk was used to supply troops behind enemy lines. The unmanned helicopter helped the army tackle the risk of losing a pilot in the zone of operation of enemy air defence systems.
The aircraft was equipped with a couple of Area-I Altius-600 drones, which were launched in the course of the exercise to provide surveillance of ground targets.
Flight Global reported that the Altius-600s “deployed from a launch kit bolted to the helicopter’s cabin deck, in another first for the DARPA’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) programme”.
The news outlet cited ALIAS Programme Manager Stuart Young as saying that “it takes less than an hour to install the [launch] kit into a Black Hawk”. He added that “the kit for the Black Hawk was built on a single sheet of steel that can be easily installed or removed”.