Bell, Boeing Pushing Unmanned Rotorcraft Into Fire Scout's Niche - AW&ST

Bell, Boeing Pushing Unmanned Rotorcraft Into Fire Scout's Niche
Aviation Week & Space Technology 10/10/05
author: Amy Butler

Helicopter makers Bell Helicopter Textron and Boeing are separately proposing unmanned variants of existing platforms in an attempt to edge out Northrop Grumman's Fire Scout.

Each of these entries is a different system. I wonder how the government will decide...

Unmanned vehicles are a very challenging engineering job. The whole enchilada is in the engineer's hands when a pilot is not involved. It also requires a lot of prior planning with respect to unmanned operations. The flight software in UAVs is quite extensive. Also, an incorrect line of code can bring down a multi-million dollar test bed. Ooops! It is pretty cool to see them flying around the sky though. I'm not as much of a fan of the remote piloted UAVs. It is just not the same.

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