Patuxent River, Md: The Navy has increased its experimentation with its fleet of combat helicopters to see how they can work with unmanned aircraft.

The Navy recently flew Lockheed Martin’s new MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter and the Northrop Grumman’s Fire Scout unmanned aircraft together in joint operations, deputy program manager Robert Kimble told reporters here yesterday, in what could the first steps in greatly extending the unmanned helicopter’s range. The early tests were designed to assess whether Fire Scout could connect with the Sea Hawk long enough to transfer intelligence collected by the drone, he said. The unmanned aircraft successfully transmuted images from its FLIR infrared camera to the helicopter’s crew. Keep reading →