Optionally-Manned Little Bird

[Paco]

http://www.boeing.com/Features/2012/09/corp_littlebird_09_20_12.html

[Flying Pig]

Any discussion or mention of unmanned helicopters should be banned from this site Furthermore..... an unmanned 500, 530 or anything that remotely resembles one is just sacrilegious and is against nature !

Edited September 21, 2012 by Flying Pig

[gary-mike]

Where's the "dislike" button.

Edited September 21, 2012 by gary-mike

[ridethisbike]

I remember seeing that a while ago when they were still teaching it how to hover and recognize boxes as buildings, avoid them, land on them, you name it.

 

It's pretty cool.

 

Buuuuuttt......I'm pretty sure that's how everyone felt about SkyNet when they started building robots.

[aeroscout]

Any discussion or mention of unmanned helicopters should be banned from this site Furthermore..... an unmanned 500, 530 or anything that remotely resembles one is just sacrilegious and is against nature !

I agree wholeheartedly.

[Bobsyouruncle]

At this point unmanned helicopters are like gas powered butter knives. They have created a product to fill a need that nobody actually needs.

 

The military is quite proud of its unmanned drone that can air drop pallets of water and will tell you how safe it is. Thing is, that job was never dangerous to begin with. And a pilot still has to start it Make a helicopter that can do a dust landing at night to a hot LZ marked by a chemlight and they can save pilots lives. But they can't do that.

 

The only job I can see this helicopter being useful for is doing something like flying tours on predetermined routes and known landing areas. So I guess if a tour company decides to buy a helicopter that costs 50 million dollars we'll all be in trouble.

 

Maybe one day this technology will become useful, but I'm pretty sure it's a ways off.

[Turboshaft]

UAVs offer jobs for pilots, so long as you don't mind flying a desk.

 

The USAF's outgoing chief of staff has admitted that it's “conceivable” the service could eventually have more UAV pilots than manned aircraft pilots.

[Flying Pig]

Fortunately, a lot of helicopter operations involve taking PEOPLE places. I think we are at least a generation (if not more) away from people getting on a robot. Who knows maybe not.....Maybe some naive people will. Personally, I want a pilot/crew who is as equally vested in the outcome of a successful flight as I am. Not some engineer sitting in an office hitting "CNTRL -ALT- DELETE" as fast as he can while I plummet to the ground 2000 miles away.