The Navy crossed a major threshold by successfully landing an unmanned drone on a simulated flight deck Saturday.
According to Wired's Spencer Ackerman:
The Dorito-shaped X-7B descended from the skies onto a mock carrier deck on dry land at the Navy’s Patuxent River testbed. It was a test flight, but one unlike the previous ones conducted by the demonstrator aircraft, it was a crucial one. The robot’s tailhook caught the kind of cable, called an MK-7 arresting gear, that the Navy’s actual Top Gun pilots have to catch all the time when they touch down on flattops at sea. Not bad for a robot, especially one that doesn’t even have a tail.
The implications of the successful test are big. Landing on a moving target like an aircraft carrier is one of the hardest maneuvers in aviation. Navy pilots call it "the Trap" and talk about a "Pucker Factor" when they pull it off. The Navy wants its semi-autonomous Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike drone, the follow-on to the X-47B, to do all that at the click of a mouse. Other nations might be scrambling to build drones and blunt the U.S.’ robotic advantage; none of them has a drone that can do anything close to this.
The Navy still has further testing to conduct before the drone will be ready to replace human pilots, notably landing the aircraft on a moving ship in a variety of weather conditions.
The United States has lead with unmanned aircraft technology and this latest successful test marks a another milestone in maintaining drone dominance, although reports from last week show China's military is attempting to catch up with an aggressive development program.