SEE Sikorsky successfully fly a rotor blown wing UAS
Because of the aircraft’s 160-kt. speed and maneuverability, it can quickly and effectively apply water and/or retardant on blazes. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
(CAL FIRE) and local fire departments across the state operate 24 Firehawks, with CAL FIRE receiving three more this year. Kate Grammer, Sikorsky regional sales lead for the Firehawk, told POWER UP that the company intends to place a demonstrator within the California market for a fully con- figured Matrix-enabled Firehawk in the coming years. In fact, Sikorsky already is moving in that direction. On
May 1, it announced that it is partnering with Rain, one of the companies in the emerging “firetech” sector that intends to apply advanced technology to wildfire suppression. In a late-April demonstration in California, ground
operators used Rain’s wildfire suppression software to assign a number of common aerial firefighting tasks to a Matrix- equipped Black Hawk. During the successful demonstration, Sikorsky safety pilots were hands-off the controls as the Black Hawk extinguished staged propane and brush fires. The Matrix-equipped aircraft flew 24 hours during two
weeks of flight. The suppression missions were flown over wildfire-prone terrain at altitudes up to 3,300 ft. in wind gusting to 30 kt., and the helicopter was fitted with a 324- gal. Bambi Bucket attached to a 40-ft. line. A crewed Orange County (California) Fire Authority Sikorsky S-76 airborne command helicopter flew alongside the autonomous Black
Hawk, demonstrating communications interoperability of the autonomous aircraft with a human-piloted helicopter in the same fire traffic area. The Matrix package on the Black Hawk included fly-by-
wire controls, satellite data link, and onboard thermal and vision cameras. Sensors mounted on the aircraft geolocated the fire and streamed video to the ground operator’s Rain tablet for situational awareness and mission planning. Using the tablet, the ground commander was able to instruct the Black Hawk to find water, fill the bucket in hover, find the fire and determine its size, calculate flight path and speed, compensate for wind, and determine when to release water to achieve the desired coverage. “Sikorsky and Rain have integrated two autonomy sys-
tems: our Matrix technology that controls the flight of any crewed or uncrewed aircraft, and Rain’s wildfire mission autonomy system that finds and tracks the fire, develops a suppression plan, and navigates the aircraft to drop water onto the target,” says Sikorsky’s Benton. “With this layered autonomy system, incident commanders and pilots can choose a level of autonomy suitable for their mission.”
Rotor Blown Wing UAS Matrix will also be a big part of Sikorsky’s jump into the unmanned aircraft system (UAS) market. The company announced earlier this year that it had successfully validated the advanced control laws to fly its battery-powered rotor
JUN 2025 POWER UP
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