Wanna fly a Blackhawk? Maybe you can
No, this isn’t a come-on for flight warrant school and a vacation at beautiful tropical Ft. Rucker.
Sikorsky has announced an unpiloted version of the Blackhawk, to be called the U-hawk, is ready to go. Only took the maker 10 months to design it and get it ready.
The latest variant of the UH-60 is unlike any other, and it’s a potential game changer. The U-Hawk is the name Sikorsky (a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) has given to its fully autonomous UH-60 variant. The U-Hawk is touted as “Unpiloted. Uncrewed. Undaunted” on the company website, and it’s been given the temporary designation S-70UAS. It is indeed an uncrewed aerial system (UAS), as the U-Hawk has no need for a physical pilot or crew.
According to the article, the U-Hawk can carry up to 25% more cargo, up to 5 tons’ worth, can self-deploy itself up to 1841 miles – and can be fitted with HIMARS rocket pods. Okay, now we’re talking.
There are more than 5,000 Black Hawk helicopters in existence, which begs the question, “Why bother making them automated at all?’ After all, they have a proven track record in and out of combat operations on multiple fronts, so it’s a fair question. Putting pilots and crewmembers onto an aircraft introduces risk, and removing them entirely increases storage space. That alone makes it a worthwhile endeavor, but it’s also true that the future of warfare is all about drones.
The onboard software and remote hardware makes it possible for anyone to fly them; you don’t need a pilot.
A soldier can use a tablet to command a U-Hawk remotely, tasking it for a variety of missions. It’s unclear if the U-Hawk will carry personnel, but it certainly has the cargo capacity should the need arise, though none of the mockups show seats in the hold.
We were doing fine till we got to both carry personnel and ground-controlled by Joe Snuffy. Not riding in that, thenkyewveddymuch. But as a cargo drone carrying “stuff” – absolutely. I really like the “up to 6 HIMARS missiles”. And having 95% commonality with the standard Blackhawk, maintenance should be relatively straightforward – if you can fix one, you can probably work on both.
So if you’re a groundpounder with a yen to fly a chopper – this baby is right up your alley. As long as you are thinking of riding a tablet instead of riding with Robert Duvall. Might even save the lives of some folks in some hot LZs, too.
Category: Science and Technology
Well. It looks like in the future everything will be drones fo’ real.
I wonder what Sarah Connor thinks of this.
I’m a bit negative here perhaps. This sounds like a great development until it runs into GPS spoofing so it loses it’s location. Does it have some backup like an inertial nav system? And at some point EMP weapons of sufficient strength will be developed that will fry electronics at some distance. How shielded are the control circuits?
That would raise the cost per unit.
The Ukranian war has demonstrated that inexpensive disposable drones are more effective than trying to protect the drones from enemy countermeasures.
This will not apply to drone helicopters for a while, but at some point we could mass produce drone utility helicopters.
I guess the question is why a Blackhawk, rather than some cheap helicopter that would not hurt our pocket. As a matter of fact, using inexpensive drone helicopters could serve as bait for drawing out enemy countermeasures and identifying their positions for our attack drones.
Future wars are increasingly looking like drone vs drone.
I had the same question. Wouldn’t it be more practical to have something purpose-built instead of adapting an existing airframe? What’s practical for a manned aircraft ain’t necessarily practical on unmanned systems.
You mean like a Cyberdyne Aerial Hunter-Killer??
Asking for John Connor.
Don’t know the answer but I suspect they started with “here is a functional design, what can we cut out or modify” rather than “let’s design one” The latter takes years, they got this handled in 10 months. Pretty impressive fill-in till a better purpose-built one can be designed.
Does it also have redundant manual override controls, so an actual person-pilot could jump in, ya’know, just in case?
Nuke ’em from orb—
Ooops, sorry; wrong movie.
Nothing like a little competition.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2024/05/16/airbus-developing-an-unmanned-lakota-helo-for-marine-resupply-mission/
I met a retired CWO4 Blackhawk Pilot several years ago in Jackson WY on vacation, who at that time was Blackhawk flight instructor who told me the things dang near fly themselves. Based on what he told me about the systems it is not a surprise they could automate them.
Tellin’ stories in the Cowboy Bar?
Hell Yes – he said the pilot has to screw up to crash one.
At first I was going say that you don’t hear of too many H-60 crew-induced mishaps. But then I remembered that HH-60 in my AFRES unit that took a roll down Mt. Hood. The wreck spent six months in our sitting in our C-130 phase inspection hangar before Sirkorski finally hauled ig back to Connecticut.
I had a few TDYs there back in the day, the first when you had the HH-3Es
Think of all the door gunners who will lose their jobs…
Same thought went through my head when the Space Shuttles were retired.
Yeahhhh it was a very specialized MOS.
Anybody remember the TV show “Whirlybirds”
Used to watch it just to see Sandra Spence.
Talk about counter rotating parts….
Was 14 when Whirlybirds came out
Interesting. IIRC the Army announced a short time ago that they were paring down the pilot section of the Aviation branch by 6000 or so.
Starting to sound like the beginnings of the US space program:
“A monkey’s gonna make the first flight.”
The Marines were using unmanned helicopters in the ‘stans 11 years ago
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2014/08/02/k-max-cargo-drone-home-from-afghanistan-headed-to-storage/
I believe you can see this same aircraft at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson.
Can you shoot a HIMARS from helicopter?