The training occurred in August as part of the National Guard’s Northern Strike exercise in Michigan, during which some 7,500 Guard forces from 36 states trained for two weeks with the latest military tech including drones and electronic warfare capabilities, according to the National Guard.
During that exercise, the noncommissioned officer — who was not named publicly — flew the optionally manned Black Hawk, or OPV Black Hawk, from the deck of a Coast Guard vessel on Lake Huron, according to Sikorsky. Using the tablet, the soldier instructed the helicopter to perform “racetrack patterns” over the lake while soldiers inside the OPV Black Hawk performed resupply parachute drops some 70 miles away. It marked the first time Sikorsky’s OPV Black Hawk conducted a mission entirely planned and controlled by soldiers.
Sikorsky — which is owned by weapons giant Lockheed Martin — has spent most of the past decade developing the optionally piloted Black Hawk program with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The advanced, semi-autonomous helicopter is meant to give the Army options to fly it with an in-cockpit pilot when the mission calls for it or to fly it remotely in situations that could prove especially dangerous — like when enemy contact is likely, officials have said.
“An optionally piloted Black Hawk aircraft can reduce pilot workload in a challenging environment or complete a resupply mission without humans on board,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky’s vice president and general manager, said in a statement. “In contested logistics situations, a Black Hawk operating as a large drone offers commanders greater resilience and flexibility to get resources to the point of need.”
Sikorsky’s UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters have been an Army staple since the 1970s. The helicopters shuttle troops and supplies around battlefields and military posts across the globe and conduct the Army’s air medevac mission. The service expects Black Hawks to fly into the 2070s.
But as the Army faces potential conflict with a near-peer power like China or Russia, service leaders want to be able to conduct operations with as few American forces on the front lines as possible. Sikorsky — like other big and small defense manufacturers — have spent recent years focused on building unmanned systems loaded with autonomous and artificial intelligence capabilities, like its MATRIX autonomy system on the unpiloted Black Hawk.
Sikorsky first flew the OPV Black Hawk in 2022. The company is also working on a fully unmanned version of the Black Hawk, which it has nicknamed the U-Hawk, according to the company.
During Northern Strike, the optionally manned Black Hawk hit a series of additional firsts after the parachute drop planned by soldiers on the Coast Guard boat.
On another mission, the OPV Black Hawk completed its “first every autonomous hookup of an external load while airborne,” according to Sikorsky. The helicopter hovered over a group of soldiers who attached a 2,900-pound water buffalo tank to be sling loaded elsewhere.
In a third exercise at Northern Strike, the optionally manned Black Hawk completed six autonomous hovering hookups to transport High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to other locations during the training, according to Sikorsky. A soldier then operated the helicopter remotely to conduct a simulated medevac mission, another first, the company said.
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