This was the first demonstration that brought together unmanned helicopters from both Lockheed and Sikorsky.

“This was just a little over a year from the acquisition that were able to find a few points where we were able to … bring a new a capability to the market that didn’t exist before because we were able to work together. I think we’re going to find a lot more of those,” said Jon McMillen, who leads business development for the K-MAX.

Igor Cherepinsky, who runs Sikorsky’s autonomy programs, said that technicians were able to get the SARA and KMAX talking to one another in less than a week.

“Both K-MAX and SARA are really mature systems,” he said.

Lockheed and partner Boeing are in a tight battle with Bell Helicopter to build new helicopters for the Army’s Future Vertical Lift program . But Lockheed stands out as the only player whose unmanned helicopter has actually seen action: K-MAX flew more than 600 cargo missions for Marines in Afghanistan. And last year, the Army successfully wired a Sikorsky Black Hawk to demonstrate unmanned flight as well.