The EconomistJune 1st 2019 Technology Quarterly |Aviation 92 tumn, is to test the system on Sikorsky’s Black Hawk
helicopter. Here it really will, on many occasions, be
in sole charge. Field commanders will, as Mr Van
Buiten puts it, have the option of two, one or no hu-
man pilots on board.
The ideas behind aliasare not confined to heli-
copters. Until 2017 darpafollowed a twin-track ap-
proach—the other track being to sponsor Aurora
Flight Sciences, a subsidiary of Boeing, to make a
system that would physically replace the co-pilot in
the cockpit of a fixed-wing aeroplane. Aurora came
up with a pair of devices to do the job. One was a specially designed
manipulator that operates the aircraft’s control yoke and pedals.
The other was an adaptation of a commercially available robotic
arm that pulled appropriate levers and flipped relevant switches.
The system also had vision. Rather than being wired to an aircraft’s
sensors, it read the instrument display directly and then reacted.
The advantages of this arrangement are obvious. With appro-
priate programming it would permit the dronification of any exist-
ing aircraft. Aurora tested it on two types of fixed-wing plane and
also a uh-1 Iroquois helicopter. It was even put through its paces at
the controls of a Boeing 737—though those controls were installed
in a flight simulator rather than a real aircraft.
Into thin air
What has happened to all this hard work is a mystery. Although
darpahas stopped paying for Aurora’s part of aliasthe firm will
not comment on how it is pursuing the matter. The project, now
branded Robotic Copilot and described as a “concept development
programme”, is still on its website, however. And the idea of some-
thing that could take the controls of an existing plane with little
modification seems an attractive one in the civilian world as well
as the military one.
As to future pilotless aircraft, significant benefits come from
designing people out from the beginning. Such craft require nei-
ther cockpits nor life-support systems. Moreover, freed from the
need to sustain a human pilot, they could accelerate faster andmanoeuvre more nimbly than is possible for a
crewed plane.
That manoeuvrability and acceleration would be
particularly advantageous for a fighter jet. And, al-
though autonomous robot fighters are not here yet,
something close to that will soon be flying. The idea
is to have strike aircraft fly in small squadrons, with
a single human acting as squadron leader.
Lockheed Martin tested this idea in 2017 by con-
verting an f-16, an ageing fighter jet, to act as a drone
under the command of a piloted lead aircraft. These
tests, conducted at Edwards Air Force Base in California, were
deemed successful, and one possible version of the future would
be to fit out and deploy the American air force’s fleet of increasing-
ly obsolete f-16s in this way, while a human master of ceremonies
sat in a more modern craft—presumably an f-35—conducting the
escorts’ actions. Another version of the future sees the robot craft
involved in these formations, known as “loyal wingmen”, as being
purpose-built. Boeing, indeed, seems to have appropriated and
capitalised the term Loyal Wingman to describe its Airpower
Teaming System, which was unveiled on February 26th.
Boeing’s offering will be 12 metres long, about three-quarters
the length of an f-35. Prototypes should fly next year. Intriguingly,
the announcement was made, and the prototypes will be built, in
Australia—for the Airpower Teaming System is being developed in
collaboration with Australia’s air force and is intended from the
beginning to be available to America’s closest allies, Australia ap-
parently being top of the list.
Boeing’s loyal wingmen are not the only ones in development.
Kratos, a Californian firm that builds drones used by pilots for tar-
get practice, is also working on them. Its first test craft, the utap-22
mako, based on a target drone, has been flying since 2015. A more
advanced vehicle, the xq58a Valkyrie, took to the air on March 5th,
making a successful test flight at Yuma in Arizona. Details of Val-
kyrie are scarce, but pictures of it suggest the extensive use of
stealth technology by its designers.
In the field of military drones, America has only one open rival
at the moment: Israel. Its state-run arms firm, Israel Aerospace In-
dustries, produces a reconnaissance drone called Heron. Europe,
by contrast, is playing catch-up, and China has said little.
Europe’s competitor to America’s drones, the snappily titled
European Medium Altitude Long Endurance Remotely Piloted Air-
craft System, is being put together by Airbus, in collaboration with
Dassault Aviation of France and Leonardo of Italy. It should be
ready for deployment by 2025. There are no European plans,
though, for loyal wingmen. China’s military-drone programme is
the purview of the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, a subsidiary of
the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a state-owned com-
pany that is based in Liaoning province. This firm has developed a
series of experimental drones with names like Wind Blade, Cloud
Shadow and Sharp Sword. As far as is known, however, China has
no production-model military drones.
America, meanwhile, is looking beyond the vision of loyal
wingmen. Both darpaand the American air force seem to be trying
to scale down the size of unmanned aircraft, in favour of numbers.
darpacalls its programme Gremlins. And it is at the heart of the air
force’s Small Unmanned Systems Flight Plan, published in 2016.
Gremlins will be drones about four metres long, with a wing-
span of 3.5 metres, that are dropped, mid-air, from transport air-
craft and then picked up again, mid-air, by that mother ship or a
similar one, if they survive their mission. darpa’s contract for the
Gremlins programme is held by Dynetics, a firm based in Alabama,
and the first test of the craft, pushing some of them out of the back
of a c-130, is scheduled for later this year. What they lack in size,
Gremlins will make up for in quantity—the idea being to over-
whelm enemy defences as a swarm of wasps overwhelms a picnic.
If it works, that will create a whole new form of aerial warfare. 7The idea is to have
strike aircraft fly in
small squadrons, with a
single human acting as
squadron leader