hawk

For the first time, Sikorsky’s optionally-piloted UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter performed parachute drops, hovered on its own while sling loads were attached, and flew a simulated medical evacuation mission at the direction of an untrained individual onboard. This all took place at an exercise earlier this year, which also marked the first instance in which a member of the U.S. military had full control over the Optionally Piloted Vehicle (OPV) Black Hawk. Sikorsky has been steadily expanding the OPV’s flight envelope and capabilities for years now, work that is now also feeding into its plan for its fully uncrewed U-Hawk drone.

Sikorsky, currently a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, brought the OPV Black Hawk to Exercise Northern Strike 25-2 back in August, but details about how the helicopter was utilized are only being shared now. The OPV’s participation in the event came through a partnership with the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Each year, the Michigan National Guard’s National All-Domain Warfighting Center (NADWC) hosts multiple iterations of Northern Strike, which features air, as well as ground and maritime components.

Flight testing of the OPV Black Hawk first started in 2019, and it flew for the first time without anyone on board three years later. At the core of the OPV is a fly-by-wire control system coupled with the MATRIX autonomy flight control software package. Development of MATRIX stretches back more than a decade now, and DARPA supported it early on through the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program.

At present, the semi-autonomous OPV is capable of flying along preset routes, which can be planned in advance of a sortie or on the fly in the field, all via a touch-screen interface on a tablet-like device. The helicopter has a degree of automated obstacle avoidance capability, and routes can also be manually altered by an operator while it is in flight. The pilot-optional Black Hawk does not require constant contact with a human operator to perform a mission, and it can act on instructions from multiple individuals at different points in a sortie. In addition, the control system allows for the performance of certain specific tasks, such as ordering the helicopter to go to a point and hold a hover there at a designated altitude. Just starting up and shutting down the OPV is done at the touch of a button, as well.

“Events like Northern Strike give us the opportunity to take user feedback and roll that into [MATRIX] software improvements as part of a continuous spiral of software loads,” Mike Baran, chief engineer at Sikorsky Innovations, told TWZ in an interview ahead of today’s announcements. “So over the past year, it’s [continued work on the OPV] been largely in the software area, and it enabled a lot of these missions that we performed successfully out at Northern Strike.”

It is important to note the OPV flew all of its sorties at Northern Strike 25-2 with a safety pilot on board. This is something that was dictated by the parameters of the exercise, which occurred within domestic U.S. airspace managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). There are strict regulations around where and when fully uncrewed aircraft can fly within the United States. In general, having a human pilot onboard also provides an additional margin of safety.

At Northern Strike 25-2, “a U.S. Army National Guard Sergeant First Class, trained in less than an hour, became the first soldier to independently plan, command, and execute OPV Black Hawk missions using the system’s handheld tablet,” according to a press release from Lockheed Martin today. “He directed the payload to a location 70 nautical miles away and commanded multiple precision airborne drops, marking the first time OPV Black Hawk operated fully under the control of an actual warfighter, instead of a trained test pilot or engineer.”

The Sergeant First Class in question, who has not been named, was also notably not a military aviator, which Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky say underscores the ease of training individuals to operate the OPV.

“The level of autonomy that the team has with the MATRIX technology and how that’s put into the [OPV] aircraft, it really takes an operator, not a pilot,” Ramsey Bentley, Sikorsky Advanced Programs Business Development Director, also told TWZ while speaking alongside chief engineer Baran.

For the precision parachute drops during Northern Strike 25-2, the OPV had first been directed to fly racetrack patterns over Lake Huron. Soldiers on board were responsible for actually releasing the payloads from the helicopter. Lockheed Martin’s press release also notes that this particular sortie was planned and executed while the operator was aboard a U.S. Coast Guard boat on the lake.

In addition, the “OPV Black Hawk completed its first-ever autonomous hookup of an external load while airborne,” according to the release. “Using its hover stability capabilities, the aircraft held position while soldiers quickly and efficiently attached a 2,900-pound water tank [trailer; also known colloquially as a water buffalo] without pilot intervention. The demonstration showed that a MATRIX-equipped aircraft can perform complex aerial resupply missions in the field.”

The OPV also carried Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Family of Munitions (MFOM) ammunition ‘pods’ slung underneath multiple times during the exercise. Tracked M270 MLRS and the wheeled M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launch vehicles both fire various munitions via standardized MFOM pods.

Sling load operations, including hooking and unhooking payloads, as well as flying to a destination with a large object swinging below, can be complex and challenging.

“The amount of experience that a pilot has, especially doing sling load operations and hookups – it takes really years to develop that capability, and that additional sense, or that ‘air sense,’ if you would,” Bentley said. “It’s not very easy, hovering over a point that you can’t see underneath to do these hookups and things like that.”

“One of the things that we’ve heard from operators on the ground is that the MATRIX capability and the autonomy [on the OPV] actually provides a much more stable platform than with a human pilot on board,” he added. “When you bring the aircraft in through the tablet interface and you ask it to hold a 10-foot hover, it holds a 10-foot hover.”

“You’re not relying on a crew chief that’s frankly hanging out of a window or hanging out the back of the aircraft, kind of upside down,” to help keep the helicopter in the proper position, he further noted. With the OPV, “the operator himself kind of has that third-person viewpoint.”

Lastly, at Northern Strike 25-2, “a soldier then used OPV Black Hawk to conduct a simulated personnel recovery, including a tail-to-tail patient transfer to a piloted Black Hawk at an unimproved landing site,” according to Lockheed Martin’s release. “This was the first time an untrained soldier commanded an autonomous MEDEVAC [medical evacuation] recovery from inside the OPV Black Hawk aircraft.”

All of this underscores the potential benefits and flexibility that optionally piloted Black Hawks might offer, especially due to the reduced crewing requirements. Being able to perform missions, or just pre-position helicopters, without the need for a pilot would be a boon in many scenarios, while also helping to reduce physical and mental strain on aviators, particularly during high-tempo operations. DARPA’s aforementioned ALIAS program was focused heavily just on increasing safety margins by scaling back the workload for human pilots, as you can read more about here. Not needing to have any humans on board for certain missions would help reduce risk, which could open up new operational opportunities in or around more contested environments, as well.

In speaking with TWZ, Sikorsky’s Bentley offered a more complete vignette for how OPVs might be utilized in future operations.

“Think about contested logistics, where, at the load point, you’ve got soldiers on the ground … The aircraft runs through all the preflight checks and everything, just like a human pilot would,” he explained. So, with “the ability of the aircraft to be sitting there at a field site, a non-pilot operator walks up, cranks the aircraft, loads in his mission, the aircraft picks up, it hovers over, or it does its internal load operations, and then it takes off and departs along on the mission [route], avoiding obstacles, etc.”

“Then, once the aircraft gets to the destination, another operator can take command of the aircraft, and execute the load out or the drop of the load,” he continued. “Or the aircraft will land and the operator can shut it down, or whatever they need to do.”

“You know the key thing there is that that’s really a customer decision,” Bentley also said when asked specifically about whether there might be plans to demonstrate the ability of OPV to conduct air drops with personnel in the main cabin, but no one in the cockpit. “Obviously, we are very comfortable with the autonomy capability of the aircraft, … but when it comes to employment of the capability and technology, that’s really a customer decision on how they want to employ the asset.”

He added that the OPV’s capabilities, and that of the underlying MATRIX software, are expanding and evolving with a constant eye toward being scalable to meet individual customer demands, which will be based in part on “their permissions, their authorizations,” and what they learn as they “develop their individual techniques, tactics, and procedures.”

Work on the OPV is also now feeding into a larger vision of crewed, pilot-option, and/or fully uncrewed variations of the Black Hawk operating collaboratively together. Bentley noted that Sikorsky has previously envisioned OPVs flying out ahead of crewed Black Hawks with soldiers onboard to perform various tasks as part of a larger mission.

“Now you’ve got [fully uncrewed] U-Hawks out there in front, and that U-Hawk is delivering launched effects UASs [uncrewed aerial systems] ahead of the ground force, and then that U-Hawk lands in the landing zone and dispatches UGVs, uncrewed ground vehicles, ahead of the soldiers,” he said. “And now we’re doing that autonomy, uncrewed, both air and ground teaming, in the soldiers’ hands, setting the conditions before the soldiers ever arrive at the landing zone.”

Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin are also heavily pitching U-Hawk as a way to squeeze new capability out of older UH-60L model Black Hawks, which the U.S. Army is notably in the process of retiring. Converting L variants in U-Hawks has been presented as a relatively economical option that is able to leverage well-established global sustainment chains, as well.

“We think about the Black Hawk as an enduring platform. The Army’s said that it’s going to be around for another 50-plus years,” Bentley said when asked about any potential plans now for offering an OPV-type conversion option. “So our ability to take MATRIX technology and put that on enduring platforms is critical to developing new capability, and, frankly, doing it at a different price point.”

The exact difference in the price point between the U-Hawk and OPV configurations is unclear, but Sikorsky has noted in the past that the OPV has additional systems requirements because it is still rated for crewed flight. There are then distinct costs associated with meeting those demands.

Non-military customers for OPV Black Hawks, as well as U-Hawks, could also be in the wings. The current operator base for crewed Black Hawks already extends beyond armed forces. Sikorsky has already demonstrated the OPV’s ability to conduct a wildfire-fighting mission, which also involved working with a third party to develop unique additions to the MATRIX software for that role.

“So we were out in California in April of this year, working with a company called Rain. And Rain went in and developed a kind of a wildfire suppression algorithm and autonomy capability, where it uses the sensors on board OPV Hawk to spot the wildfire,” Bentley said. “And we were able to demonstrate autonomous wildfire suppression to include OPV going [and] finding the pool or the fill site for the Bambi Bucket.”

“And then once it filled up the Bambi Bucket with water, then the system [on] the aircraft would take off, and it would go toward a general area that the team designated as an area of interest,” he continued. “The sensors on board the aircraft … then would identify the fire through a FLIR [forward-looking infrared] camera. And then the Rain autonomy [package] would figure out the hot spot, figure out the approach path, and the dispersion of the water, and then it would command the OPV aircraft to fly the flight route. And then it commanded the water release also.”

Altogether, as the details about what happened at Northern Strike 25-2 have now further underscored, Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin continue to steadily build out the OPV Black Hawk’s capabilities, which could also now have implications for U-Hawk.

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Sikorsky has unveiled a new, fully uncrewed version of the Black Hawk helicopter with a completely transformed front end that swaps out the cockpit for clamshell doors. Depending on how it is configured, what has been dubbed the U-Hawk can move thousands of pounds of outsized cargo internally and slung underneath, deploy uncrewed ground vehicles, and fire dozens of “launched effects” like surveillance and reconnaissance drones and loitering munitions.

A U-Hawk demonstrator, converted from an ex-U.S. Army UH-60L, is on display at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual conference in Washington, D.C., which opened today and at which TWZ is in attendance. Sikorsky, now a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, also refers to the design as the S-70 Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), with S-70 being the company’s internal model number for H-60 variants.

The U-Hawk leverages the company’s past work on a Pilot Optional Vehicle (OPV) version of the Black Hawk, which has been flying for years, as well as its MATRIX autonomy flight control software. Development of MATRIX first began more than a decade ago and was buoyed early on by support from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program.

“A lot of our customers said, hey, I need to be able to move things into theater, and I need to be able to move them in mass. And a lot of the drones out there may be able to carry 100 pounds, may be able to carry 500 pounds,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky Vice President and General Manager, told TWZ and other outlets during a press call earlier this month. “We look introspectively, what do we have? Well, we actually have an autonomous Black Hawk today, our OPV, optionally piloted. But why couldn’t we just take the cockpit out of that and make that a UAS?”

“We conceived this idea [the U-Hawk], believe it not, at the last AUSA, talking to some of the folks from the Army and other services,” Igor Cherepinsky, Sikorsky Innovations Director, also told TWZ and other outlets during a separate call ahead of the opening of today’s conference. “We procured the [underlying UH-60L] aircraft towards the beginning of this year.”

It took Sikorsky roughly 10 months to go from “concept to reality,” according to a company press release. The goal is for it to take flight for the first time next year. The U-Hawk has, so far, been an internally funded effort.

The U-Hawk adaptation of the Black Hawk does do much more than simply remove the pilots and offers significantly greater capability than crewed versions for certain missions. The design also features a different hardware backend for the MATRIX autonomy package and a revised fly-by-wire control system compared to the previous OPV Black Hawk, which we will come back to later on.

Still, the most eye-catching features of the new uncrewed version are its new front section and revised internal arrangement.

“We have completely removed the cockpit, the pilot, and also the crew chief stations of the aircraft,” Ramsey Bentley, Sikorsky Advanced Programs Business Development Director, explained while speaking alongside Cherepinsky. “This gives us the entire cabin and cockpit area for either a logistics operation or mission support operations.”

Sikorsky says the U-Hawk will also be able to “self-deploy” out to a range of 1,600 nautical miles and have a total unrefueled endurance of 14 hours. The press release today also says the uncrewed Black Hawk can “carry internal fuel tanks for increased range or extended time on station,” but it is unclear if this is required to meet the stated range and endurance figures, although that seems likely. Increased range while carrying a useful payload still opens up significant new opportunities, especially for operations across the broad expanses of the Pacific, but also elsewhere.

Payload-wise, Sikorsky expects the uncrewed Black Hawk to be able to carry up to 7,000 pounds internally or 9,000 pounds slung underneath, or a mix of both up to a maximum rating of 10,000 pounds. The company says this is roughly in line with the payload capacity, by weight, of a standard crewed UH-60L. For helicopters, in general, the maximum allowable payload on any particular sortie is also heavily dependent on environmental factors like altitude and temperature.

The U-Hawk’s revised configuration gives it approximately 25 percent more physical space inside for cargo and/or other payloads compared to existing UH-60 variants. This is important as payloads often have dimensional restrictions, as well as weight-based ones. Some cargoes that would have been previously slung underneath could be carried internally, which would drastically increase the range at which they could be delivered.

“The payload, I think, is what really distinguishes this from competitors. … So one can start to imagine the missions that that U-Hawk can begin to solve,” Beth Parcella, Sikorsky Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, noted while speaking together with Vice President and General Manager Benton. “Everything from delivering swarms of drones, from launched effects ‘quivers,’ carrying cargo in a contested logistics environment, driving on and off uncrewed ground vehicles, operating in a counter-UAS function, [and] roll-on and roll-off of supplies.”

“So there’s a tremendous amount of flexibility with this aircraft,” she added.

When it comes to “launched effects,” or LEs, this is a catch-all term that the U.S. military currently uses to refer to uncrewed aerial systems that can be fired from other aerial platforms, as well as ones on the ground or at sea. Sikorsky and its parent company, Lockheed Martin, are currently using the Army’s requirements for three tiers of short, medium, and long-range launched effects as a baseline for the development of the launch ‘quivers’ and what gets loaded in them. LEs in all three categories could be configured to perform surveillance and reconnaissance and electronic warfare missions, as well as be employed as loitering munitions or act as decoys.

“What this quiver does is, depending upon the size of the launched effect, it’s able to hold 24 to 50 different launched effects in the back of the aircraft,” Bentley said. “The quiver is actually designed for what would be the Army short-range and medium-range-sized LEs. The long-range [ones] probably ends up going out on the [stub] wing, like you’ve probably seen [in] some other demonstrations.”

Bentley also noted that the quivers will be able to carry mixed loads of different types of LEs at once, including types developed by other companies.

Parcella did not elaborate on the potential “counter-UAS function” for the U-Hawk, but indicated that it could be tied to its launched effects capabilities. The U-Hawk might be able to carry other types of weaponry, as well as electronic warfare systems, that could be employed against hostile drones, as well as other targets.

As noted, general cargo-carrying is also envisioned as a key role for the uncrewed Black Hawk. Sikorsky says the U-Hawk will be able to carry up to four U.S. military-standard Joint Modular Intermodal Containers (JMIC), spread between the main cabin and slung underneath, compared to the two that existing Black Hawk variants can lug around today. It will also be able to carry a single one of the standard ammunition ‘pods’ used in the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), as well as a pair of Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) in their launch canisters, according to today’s press release. The Army operates both the M270 and M142. The Marine Corps has HIMARSs, as well, and is also fielding NSM in a ground-launched configuration.

The U-Hawk’s clamshell doors allow for the loading and unloading of cargo even while the rotors are still turning. There is also a folding ramp to help ease the process, as well as allow for the deployment of UGVs.

All of “this is designed to do direct support of the maneuver commander. So, as the Army is conducting an air assault, you would envision the U-Hawk flying ahead of the soldiers,” Bentley explained. “As the U-Hawk comes into the landing zone area, first it dispenses launched effects out of the sides of the aircraft, out of our launched effects quiver. And then it lands, it disembarks the UGV, and then the aircraft departs. And this is done ahead of any soldiers putting boots on the ground.”

“You’ve probably heard about Gen. [James] Rainey, the AFC [Army Futures Command] commander, talking about metal-on-metal first contact,” Bentley said. “This is Sikorsky focused on that commander’s need, the soldiers’ need, to put these launched effects, UGVs, and UAS in the battle space, ahead of us, putting soldiers in harm’s way.”

The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps are also both especially interested in using vertical takeoff and landing-capable uncrewed aircraft for logistics missions, including the resupply of forces in higher-threat areas. The Marines are already pursuing a multi-tier family of Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC) platforms, and have started to field drones to meet the lowest-end Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aircraft System (TRUAS) requirement. 

Bentley also said the company envisions U-Hawks performing non-military missions, including supporting wildfire fighting and disaster relief operations. A number of civilian operators already fly crewed H-60 variants in these roles.

Regardless of the missions it is configured for, Sikorsky is designing the U-Hawk to provide all of its capabilities with minimal training and sustainment requirements. Sikorsky says individuals without aviation-specific skill sets can be readily trained to operate the uncrewed Black Hawk via touchscreen tablet-like devices. The MATRIX system has a demonstrated ability to get platforms like the OPV Black Hawk between set waypoints in a highly autonomous manner.

“Upshot of this is that you can operate this aircraft with a minimally trained operator, and a tablet, if that’s what you want. We [are] obviously also providing a way to be integrated into [a] bigger airspace picture, be it civil or military airspace, where one can exercise more control over the aircraft,” Cherepinsky explained. “If you tell it to go from airport A to airport B, for example, and it knows it’s in civil airspace, it will take the right routes, follow the right civil procedures. If it knows it’s a military airspace, it will do what it thinks is right for the military airspace.”

“In some cases, [it] may not be what exactly — what you want. So, we’re providing this level of adjustable autonomy where you can have a local operator on the ground, for example, operating the aircraft as a crane, right, moving around the field, moving things around the field, loading the aircraft,” he added. “You can hand it off to a more central UAS command, where they have a lot more fine detail over … speeds, altitudes, and whatnot. It’s really, really up to our customer how they want to operate these vehicles.”

Sikorsky is also presenting U-Hawk as a very cost-effective option, even compared to what it previously demonstrated with the OPV Black Hawk.

“Our S-70 OPV aircraft has been flying for a number of years,” Cherepinsky said. “It’s optionally piloted. It’s [a] human-rated fly-by-wire system. It’s our autonomy system. It comes at a certain price point.”

He pointed out that many of the systems of the OPV demonstrator utilized available components sourced from existing suppliers rather than ones designed with that aircraft specifically in mind. This included the hardware used to run the MATRIX system, which he described as being more than what Sikorsky necessarily wanted or needed for that application. As he mentioned, the systems also had to meet standards for an aircraft designed to carry humans, which is not something U-Hawk has to take into account at present.

“On the U-Hawk, we actually did a lot more vertical integration,” according to Cherepinsky. “We designed our own vehicle management computers, our actuation, and the price point of the entire system, not just the aircraft, is much, much lower. As an example, our vehicle management computers are 10s of 1000s of dollars, not hundreds, as they are on a human-rated aircraft.”

The current cost proposition for the U-Hawks also includes savings from reusing existing UH-60L airframes. The U.S. Army has been steadily retiring these versions and selling them off as it acquires newer, more capable M variants. The Army had been working to bring some 760 L models up to an improved standard called the UH-60V, but axed plans for further conversions last year as part of a larger shakeup in the service’s aviation priorities. As such, hundreds more UH-60Ls are expected to become available in the coming years. Other older H-60s that could be turned into uncrewed versions might become available as other operators around the world begin upgrading their fleets, as well.

“We certainly can [build all-new U-Hawks]. It all depends on the economics and price point,” Cherepinsky said.

It is worth noting that the U.S. Army is currently envisioning future air assaults, especially in the context of a potential future high-end fight with China in the Pacific, stretching over distances beyond what the U-Hawk could cover. The ongoing war in Ukraine also continues to offer particularly good examples of how growing threat ecosystems are increasingly imposing significant operational limitations on the use of crewed helicopters. The pursuit of launched effects within the Army and elsewhere across the U.S. military directly reflects increasingly more capable and long-range adversary anti-air capabilities. The Army also notably canceled plans to acquire a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), which was set to be a crewed helicopter of some kind, last year, citing threat concerns and plans to focus more on uncrewed platforms.

“So, I’ll tell you up front, I can’t be specific on the things we’re doing to address survivability. And survivability has been an issue for aviation, for vertical aviation, for a long time,” Benton said during the previous press call in response to a direct question from this author about what might be in the works to help uncrewed and crewed Black Hawks address growing threats going forward. “We are leveraging the entire power of Lockheed Martin … what is [sic] the technologies that Lockheed Martin has and can bring to bear to provide survivability on those aircraft. Those are the things we’re continuing to look at.”

At the same time, crewed helicopters are not going away, and tradeoffs will have to be made. For many missions, the U-Hawk removes the biggest risk factor in terms of combat losses, a human crew, while also offering a significant boost in some capabilities. The uncrewed Black Hawk also proposes a way to do all of that at a lower cost that also leverages extremely well-established logistics and sustainment chains. This is particularly significant for the U.S. Army, which expects to continue flying H-60s on some level through at least 2070.

U-Hawks could also take over certain missions in lower-threat environments from crewed platforms, presenting the potential for additional operational flexibility and cost benefits. Being able to autonomously move even a few hundred pounds of critical cargo, such as spare parts, between far flung and remote locations separated by many hundreds of miles, without the need for a fully qualified aircrew, could be a boon even in lower threat areas. The fact that it can move much larger loads internally, without the range penalties of sling loading, is an even bigger sell. All this could be done without adding a new type to the Army’s shrinking helicopter fleet and leveraging the H-60/S-70’s global supply chain is also a very attractive factor, as well. Those same attributes underscore the sales potential of the uncrewed Black Hawk to non-military operators, too.

“We’re really excited. And honestly, some of us are thinking, gosh, why didn’t we think about this five years ago?” Parcella said on the press call earlier this month.

Update:

We got a walk-around tour of the U-Hawk on the floor of the Army Association’s symposium, check it out here.

Contact the author: [email protected]