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Shocking photos capture Black Hawk helicopter flying WITHOUT A PILOT

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Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk OPV, N600PV (79-23298) helicopter during its first unmanned flight. (Ted Carlson/Sikorsky Aircraft via SWNS)

By Dean Murray via SWNS

Amazing scenes shows a Black Hawk helicopter flying without a PILOT.

The DARPA Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program completed a first ever flight of a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter without anyone onboard.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.

Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk OPV, N600PV (79-23298) helicopter during its first unmanned flight at Sabre AHP, Tennessee, on Saturday, February 5th, 2022. (Ted Carlson/Sikorsky Aircraft via SWNS)
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Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, completed thirty minutes of uninhabited flight with the optionally piloted vehicle (OPV) over the U.S. Army installation at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on February 5th. An additional uninhabited flight was also conducted on February 7th.

DARPA explain: “The Black Hawk was retrofitted with Sikorsky MATRIX autonomy technologies that form the core of ALIAS and can change the way aviators and air crews execute their missions by providing assistance when flying with limited visibility or without communications.

“With ALIAS, the Army will have much more operational flexibility,” said Young. “This includes the ability to operate aircraft at all times of the day or night, with and without pilots, and in a variety of difficult conditions, such as contested, congested, and degraded visual environments.”

“With reduced workloads pilots can focus on mission management instead of the mechanics,” said Stuart Young, program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “This unique combination of autonomy software and hardware will make flying both smarter and safer.”

Black Hawks are used by the U.S. military in a variety of roles, from search and rescue to special ops missions. They were believed to have been used in the recent raid in Syria that resulted in the death of the leader of the ISIS terrorist group Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.

Within the next month, the ALIAS program plans to conduct the first flight of a fly-by-wire M-model Black Hawk at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

DARPA state: “ALIAS is a flexible, extensible automation architecture for existing manned aircraft that enables safe reduced crew operations, which facilitates the addition of high levels of automation into existing aircraft. It also provides a platform for integrating additional automation or autonomy capabilities tailored for specific missions.

“The ALIAS program has leveraged the considerable advances in aircraft automation systems over the past 50 years, as well as similar advances in remotely piloted aircraft. Even in today’s most automated aircraft, pilots must still manage complex interfaces and respond to unexpected situations.

“ALIAS aims to support execution of an entire mission from takeoff to landing, including autonomously handling contingency events such as aircraft system failures. Easy-to-use interfaces facilitate supervisor-ALIAS interaction.”

The Army is currently exploring potential use cases for technologies such as ALIAS, including those outlined in the U.S. Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program.

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