If you can tolerate the fuck yeah music in this video for long enough to watch it to the end, you'll see something pretty neat/terrifying. According to several America's top military minds, the United States is lagging behind its competitors on the world stage when it comes to drone technology.
Given how essential drones have proven to be in the Russo-Ukrainian War, that's not a good thing. Whether we like it or not, SkyNet drones are quickly becoming key assets in national defense.
To catch up with the Chinese, Iranian, and Russian drone programs, the American military industrial complex has had to do some fancy dancing. They're not there yet, but at least one notion that's been fleshed out is pretty clever.
Sikorsky, owned by Lockheed Martin, was responsible for the design and manufacture of the iconic Black Hawk helicopter. It's been a mainstay of Army aviation and action movies since the 1980s. There have been several variants of it over the years. They've seen improvements, including upgraded avionics, enhanced survivability, and other systems, all of which have been used to keep the airframe current with the times.
One of the problems with the Blackhawk is that it excels at getting soldiers into and out of trouble, but it's not particularly effective as a cargo hauler. That's all changed with the U Hawk Cargo Drone.
This video shows the U Hawk prototype, which was built out using a former U.S. Army UH-60L variant of the Black Hawk. By removing the cockpit and Crew Chief position in the chopper, in favor of drone avionics, Sikorsky was able to create an unmanned version of the Blackhawk that can haul 9,000 pounds slung underneath it or 8,000 pounds inside of it. Payloads can include troops, mission packages, vehicles, or even other drones or lingering munitions to be launched in theater.
Amazingly, it only took Sikorsky's engineers 10 months to go from concept to prototype. Part of this is because DARPA and Lockheed Martin have been putzing around with the idea of an autonomous Black Hawk for years. The U Hawk is nowhere near ready for primetime, and at this point hasn't received any government funding for its further development.
Whether or not it makes it past the prototype stage remains to be seen. But hey, it's always nice to see that more and more people, including the military, are upcycling their old stuff.
