Secret Missions for Special Forces’ Stealth Robo-Copter

Last year, U.S. Special Operations Command quietly began taking delivery of  7 Boeing-built Hummingbird robotic helicopters, and outfitting them for two-gigapixel spy cameras, foliage-penetrating radars, small guided missiles and even 800-pound-capacity cargo pods.

Now the command has announced it deploy three of them to an “undisclosed location” next year, according to British aviation magazine Air Forces Monthly. It seemed to me that the undisclosed location would be west of Pakistan, east of Iran, south of the former Soviet Union and crawling with Taliban. A small fleet of quiet, lethal robots, each with a 30-hour endurance and a bunch of equipment options, could come in quite handy there. But SOCOM spokesman Maj. Wes Ticer said Afghanistan is not the destination. Rather, the robo-copters are destined for “a field environment in late 2010 to determine the reliability of the system.”

Still, hush-hush robots are all the rage in the escalating Afghanistan-Pakistan war. Predator drone ops are an open secret in Pakistan, where their attacks have sparked a major controversy over alleged civilian casualties. At least one experimental “black” drone apparently operates out of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. In the same region, the Marines want new drones for rapid re-supply missions during widely-scattered infantry operations. If and when they reach A’stan, SOCOM’s Hummingbirds might combine the Predator’s lethality with the Marine’ drone’s cargo load — and the Kandahar bot’s secrecy.

[PHOTO: Darpa]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/secret-missions-for-special-forces-stealth-robo-copter/