Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky business has been selected by the US Marine Corps (USMS) to demonstrate the maturity and capability of its Matrix flight autonomy system, Lockheed Martin reported on 11 December 2024.
Operationally relevant demonstration flights during 2025 using Sikorsky’s Optionally Piloted UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter will inform the USMC’s Aerial Logistics Connector programme. The demonstrations will show how autonomous aircraft can keep future marine forces supplied, whether operating from US Navy ships or expeditionary bases ashore.
The activity is being funded under a recent Phase 1 Aerial Logistics Connector agreement through an Other Transaction Agreement under the Naval Aviation Systems Consortium to Sikorsky by Naval Air Systems Command.
Sikorsky Innovations, the company’s rapid development and prototyping group, has already demonstrated mission-relevant capabilities of the Matrix system in both military and commercial operational environments aboard multiple rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft.
In July 2024 at Stafford Airport, Virginia, and again in October 2024 at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) exposition in Washington, DC, Sikorsky and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) demonstrated autonomous flights of the Optionally Piloted Black Hawk to US Department of Defense (DoD) officials. At the October demonstration DoD leaders on the AUSA tradeshow floor learned to send high-level mission goals to the helicopter, while 300 miles away, at Sikorsky’s headquarters in Connecticut, the aircraft autonomously took off, hovered, flew a short circuit of the flight field and landed successfully.
These recent demonstrations build on autonomous logistics flights at Project Convergence 2022, when Sikorsky and DARPA successfully demonstrated to the US Army how the Optionally Piloted Black Hawk, operating without humans on board, can safely and reliably perform internal and external cargo resupply missions.
Initially intended to improve the flight safety of crewed helicopters, the Matrix system was matured with funding from DARPA’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) programme. Advanced features include assisted flight handling for two pilot operations, virtual co-pilot for a single pilot or fully autonomous flight with no pilots.
