Little more than a year after its first hands-off flight, Boeing's optionally-manned MD530F Little Bird has accumulated around 300 flight hours and launched both Hellfire missiles and 70 mm rockets without pilot intervention. Live fire trials at Yuma Proving Grounds last August successfully integrated fire and flight controls to aim the autonomous helicopter and its weapons at programmed ground targets. The US Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) at Fort Eustis, Virginia is using the company-funded demonstrator to address the broad technical issues of weapons on future Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Through 2006, the Little Bird UAV will continue to play Unmanned Light Attack Reconnaissance Testbed (ULART) with various weapons and sensors. ULART will not develop the Little Bird UAV for the Army. However the pilot and flight engineer aboard the helicopter bring man-in-the-loop safety to UAV testing with live ordnance. Army ULART lead engineer Ryland Barlow observes, "When you put weapons on a UAV, you can't cut corners. You have to have a manned-system level of integration and assurance."
展开▼
