Who needs a drone when you can fly a Black Hawk from a tablet? DARPA's $6 million award to Sikorsky paid off when a National Guard soldier, trained in under an hour, used a handheld tablet to command an optionally piloted Black Hawk through multiple autonomous missions.

Lockheed Martin recently reported that a Black Hawk helicopter built by its Sikorsky subsidiary and outfitted with the company's MATRIX autonomy system, developed under DARPA's Aircrew Labor In-cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program, flew a trio of practice missions at Michigan's Camp Grayling in August. At the helm was an Army National Guard Sergeant First Class who "trained in less than an hour" and "became the first soldier to independently plan, command, and execute OPV [optionally piloted] Black Hawk missions using

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