The revolution of military aircraft For anyone with a fascination for flying it is a surreal experience to stand in a hangar with five Bell 407 helicopters and not a single pilot in sight. Out on the flight line at the Point Mugu United States Naval Air Station, north of Los Angeles, a ground crew is preparing an unmanned MQ-8C Fire Scout chopper for takeoff, but the pilot is sitting in a small, windowless shipping container about 200 metres away. Welcome to the future of naval aviation fleets of unmanned helicopters flying on and off warships conducting missions as diverse as missile strikes, surveillance and hash and trash resupply flights. Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman is at the cutting edge of this technology with its Fire Scout system and the company has built 24 MQ-8B models that are already in service with the US Navy and 19 of the bigger C models have been ordered so far with another 10 expected this year. For the $20 million C model, which is the machine of choice for the Royal Australian Navy for its future frigate and other platforms, the company takes delivery of Canadian built manned Bell 407 machines off the production line and then demans them and converts them into Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) using advanced systems and sensors. Program director for the US Navy Captain Jeff Dodge likened the upgrade from the MQ-8B based on a smaller airframe to the C model aircraft to a brain transplant. We are taking the computer and putting it on a bigger, stronger helicopter, he said in a hangar at Webster Field near Pax River Naval Air Station on Chesapeake Bay. That bigger machine can fly for up to 12 hours at almost 200km/h and 5500 metres up and can lift more than 3000kg of payload and fuel. That gives tactical planners incredible flexibility when the UAVs are operated in concert with manned choppers such as the Seahawk MH-60 Romeo or the MRH-90 also fielded by the RAN. At the other extreme of the unmanned aircraft spectrum is the $80 million Northrop Grumman built US Navy Triton maritime surveillance aircraft. Australia is set to buy up to seven of the jet aircraft to be based at Edinburgh RAAF base near Adelaide. On the east coast of the United States at Pax River near Washington DC three Tritons are undergoing final testing before they are scheduled to reach Early Operational Capability (EOC) by December 2017. After that the aircraft will operate at five locations in so called orbits of four aircraft providing the US with constant global coverage of the oceans. News coverage from Afghanistan means that most people are familiar with modern-day fixed-wing military UAVs such as missile armed Reapers and Predators or the smaller unarmed Heron aircraft flown by the RAAF on surveillance missions from Kandahar airfield. Northrop Grumman is taking the unmanned concept to the next level with the Triton and Fire Scout and the most incredible of them all the X47-B unmanned combat jet that has already landed and taken off from an aircraft carrier. Pilots such as Lieutenant Commander David Selew, who have thousands of hours of flying experience, marvel at the capacity of the latest unmanned flying systems. Lieutenant Commander Selew is the Government Flight Test Director for the Fire Scout MQ-8C at Point Mugu. He is a PC-3 Orion pilot by trade and while he is not prepared to write the obituary for airborne pilots just yet he understands that unmanned systems are booming, attractive and here to stay. He said chopper pilots were amazed by the performance of the unmanned machines. They are more stable and the feedback we get from the system is faster than from a pilot, Lt Commander Selew said. Sensors on the ground at Point Mugu mimic a ship landing system so the chopper simply picks up a radio beam and is guided to the deck. If there is a communications problem it will just fly right back to where it started and touch down smoothly, Lt Commander Selew said. Another major advantage of an unmanned machine is that if it crashes or is shot down there is no terrible news to pass to the families of the aircrew just a pile of crumpled metal. Deputy Triton Program director for the US Navy at Pax River Commander Jason Rider is an enthusiastic advocate for the pilotless system that he says has already achieved an 88 per cent. With a wingspan as wide as a Boeing 737 passenger jet the Triton can fly up to 20,000 metres high and remain aloft for more than 24 hours tuning it powerful 360 degree multi-function radar and others sensors over a vast swathe of ocean without the problems of a manned system that include risk and crew fatigue. As United States P-3 numbers drop off in coming years support staff and pilots will be used to fly Tritons that will be forward deployed at US fleet bases around the world. The same approach will apply to the RAAF fleet of Orions as they retire during the next decade to be replaced by either Triton or the Boeing P-8 Poseidon manned aircraft. They wont be forward based but they will operate away from Adelaide at places such as Tindal, Darwin and Port Hedland. Triton can scour vast amounts of ocean it finds something of interest and relays that back to its manned counterparts to come out and investigate, Commander Rider said. He said the aircraft sensors were very powerful and the turret under the nose was the same as the Reaper and Predator and could provide extreme hi-resolution imagery. If you want to read what kind of shirt a guy is wearing you would need to be at 5000 feet, he said. There may always be a need to have a manned counterpart. It [unmanned] clearly is the future from a maritime perspective time will tell. Australia has funded some small target work that involved detecting and identifying small vessels in various sea states as well as oil and gas platforms and if the RAAF wants others systems such as weather radar and ground targeting systems fitted then it will need to be engaged as a development partner. That was RAAF preference but the top brass will recommend an ordinary (low risk) Foreign Military Sales (FMS) buy that will also exclude Australian industry from the system global supply chain. That could be expensive with interest being shown by the UK, European nations, Japan and South Korea. The final decision will be made by the National Security Committee of Cabinet (NSC) in the context of the Defence White Paper due out in August. The US Navy is buying 68 Tritons and Australia is the first overseas customer for the aircraft that will cost about $80-million each. At the Pax River base the Tritons are controlled by air vehicle operators, mission payload operators and a tactical commander who are located in a control room with three large TV screens on the wall and each operator working a keyboard, mouse and a bank of computer screens. There is no joystick and the system is fly by mouse with the operator using the computer mouse to control the aircraft even if it is flying thousands of kms away. The future has arrived and as sure as night follows day it will involve fewer airborne pilots and increasing numbers of unmanned aircraft systems. Have we seen the last of piloted aircraft? Probably not, but it will become increasingly difficult in the years ahead to find a military pilot who actually takes to the air.