The US Army officially received its first optionally piloted UH-60Mx Black Hawk helicopter on 20 March 2026, with the US Department of War hailing the event as “a pivotal moment in the army’s push to build a safer, smarter and more versatile helicopter fleet for the future”.

The aircraft, developed by Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky business in conjunction with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and integrated with Sikorsky’s MATRIX autonomy suite, will now enter rigorous testing by the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) over the next few months. This will validate how seamlessly the aircraft can be controlled from the ground; determine how it performs in complex, real-world mission scenarios on its own; and help develop techniques, tactics and procedures (TTPs) for the use of optionally piloted and fully autonomous systems.

The optionally piloted UH-60Mx Black Hawk came about as the result of DARPA’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) programme, which was initiated in 2014 with the goal of creating a removable kit for existing aircraft that would provide a high degree of automation, thus reducing the complexity of flying, enhancing safety and allowing pilots to focus on higher-level mission tasks.

The UH-60Mx mirrors Sikorsky’s Optionally Piloted Black Hawk: a UH-60A Black Hawk modified with the MATRIX autonomy suite plus full-authority fly-by-wire controls. This aircraft made its first flight on 29 May 2019 and then performed its first entirely unmanned flight as part of the ALIAS programme on 5 February 2022 at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

The MATRIX autonomy suite has been installed on all three Black Hawk models operated by the US Army: the UH-60A, UH-60L and UH-60M.

Introducing an optionally piloted version of a helicopter already in its inventory offers a number of advantages to the US Army. As well adding capability without unduly enlarging the maintenance and logistics burden on rotary-wing fleet maintainers, the ability to opt to perform a sortie with an unmanned platform obviously minimises the risk to flight crew. While some sorties over hostile territory will always need a live crew – for example a casualty evacuation mission where a crew might be needed to recover wounded troops – the MATRIX autonomy suite means that a pilot would not be required to manually fly that mission and could concentrate on other mission tasks. However, other potentially dangerous sorties, such as a resupply mission into a combat zone, could be performed with the delivery platform entirely unmanned.

Last year, at the Association of the US Army (AUSA) show held in Washington, DC, from 13 to 15 October 2025, Sikorsky unveiled the S-70UAS U-Hawk: an autonomous, unmanned cargo variant of the Black Hawk. The S-70UAS U-Hawk shown at AUSA 2025 was essentially a UH-70L with its cockpit section replaced with actuated clamshell doors and a ramp, giving it 25% more cargo space than a typical Black Hawk and the ability to accommodate oversized loads up to the maximum gross take-off weight of the aircraft, which for the UH-60L is just under 10,000 kg.  This would allow the aircraft to perform a number of new missions, such as deploying an uncrewed ground vehicle, transporting up to four Joint Modular Intermodal Containers (as opposed to two for a standard Black Hawk), or deploying launched effects from launchers secured to the cabin.