US drone lands on carrier deck in historic flight
12 July 2013 11:27 PM GMT
A bat-winged drone touched down smoothly on the deck of a US aircraft carrier marking a historic milestone for robotic flight. The US Navy’s X-47B floated down toward the carrier USS George HW Bush at reduced speed and then caught an arresting wire on its tail hook, bringing it to a stop in a textbook landing, as reporters and top brass watched Wednesday.
‘You saw the future today,’ Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told journalists afterward. The experimental plane had taken off about an hour earlier from the Patuxent River naval air station in Maryland before arriving at the carrier about 80 miles off the Virginia coast at about 1:40 pm local time.
Naval pilots require years of training to learn how to land a fighter jet on a carrier floating at sea, one of the most daunting tasks in aviation. But Wednesday’s unprecedented landing by an unmanned plane showed that sophisticated computer software could perform the same task, guiding a robotic aircraft safely.
‘You saw the future today,’ Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told journalists afterward. The experimental plane had taken off about an hour earlier from the Patuxent River naval air station in Maryland before arriving at the carrier about 80 miles off the Virginia coast at about 1:40 pm local time.
Naval pilots require years of training to learn how to land a fighter jet on a carrier floating at sea, one of the most daunting tasks in aviation. But Wednesday’s unprecedented landing by an unmanned plane showed that sophisticated computer software could perform the same task, guiding a robotic aircraft safely.
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