Forget that nonsense about Amazon delivering your purchases by drone. The latest in autonomous aircraft technology could be delivering gear and people for the military in a few years—and if the Federal Aviation Administration ever figures out how to accommodate them, it could be flying domestic cargo and passenger flights alongside (or instead of) human crews.

“Pilot optional” aircraft are being tested by the military and could make it possible to convert existing fleets of helicopters into aircraft that can either be flown by humans or dispatched on their own depending on the mission. The Office of Naval Research’s Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS) program and the Army’s Optionally Piloted Black Hawk (OPBH) program have both demonstrated that full-sized helicopters can be configured to fly on their own, taking off and landing while safely avoiding obstacles. And a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program is seeking to create a system that could handle every aspect of a flight crew’s job—including things like aircraft maintenance.

The Marine Corps has been heavily dependent on its helicopter fleet since the 1950s, when the Corps first developed its strategy of “vertical envelopment”—using helicopters to ferry Marines ashore from ships instead of slow-moving landing craft to avoid heavy coastline defenses. Both the Army and Marine Corps depended heavily on helicopters in Iraq and (especially) Afghanistan for resupply, where trucking in ammunition, food, and supplies was made difficult or impossible by rough terrain and the threat of improvised roadside bombs. But that dependence during operations puts a heavy strain on flight crews, and it left leadership trying to balance rest time for pilots with the demands of both resupply missions and more demanding combat operations.

The Navy and Marine Corps already have some experience with autonomous cargo helicopters. Lockheed Martin and Kaman Air Vehicles initially delivered a pair of unmanned K-MAX cargo helicopters under a "joint urgent need" contract from the Navy in 2011. Once started and positioned for takeoff by a human operator, the K-MAX can carry up to 4,000 pounds of cargo slung beneath it to a destination and drop it off without landing. The helicopter can then return to base to land or to conduct a “hot hook-up,” hovering while more cargo is attached to its sling for delivery.

The two K-MAX helicopters were sent to Afghanistan in November of 2011 for what was supposed to be a six-month evaluation. They turned out to be so valuable that the Marine Corps extended their tours through August of 2014. Despite the crash of one of the helicopters in June of 2013—the cause of which has yet to be fully explained by the Marine Corps—the other continues to fly cargo missions in Afghanistan today.

.

There are three obvious problems with the K-MAX, however. They can’t fly autonomously into an unfamiliar location and pick their own landing site. They’re also single-purpose heavy lift helicopters and can’t take on the role of medevac or airlift like the multi-role manned helicopters already owned by the Marine Corps and Army. And because they’re not exactly standard to the military, they require separate parts and maintenance procedures. That would require the K-MAX to become a “program of record”—a full-blown procurement program of its own—something the Marine Corps is reportedly considering but not yet committed to.

What the services are looking for is a way to transform helicopters they already fly.

The Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command’s OPBH program, which evolved from internal research at Sikorsky Aircrafts, aims to do just that. They want to modify an aircraft that already is ubiquitous in Army aviation: the UH-60 Black Hawk. The Army started demonstration flights of OPBH in March.

In many ways, the OPBH program is similar to the unmanned K-MAX helicopter. It’s intended to handle unmanned slung cargo operations and put the human pilot in the role of mission coordinator rather than delivery man. It can also act as a co-pilot, allowing a single pilot to command the aircraft and focus on the situation while letting the aircraft handle the grunt work of flying. If it gets widely deployed, OPBH will make it possible for Army helicopter squadrons to pick and choose the missions pilots and crew need to fly, while leaving the true drudge work to the helicopters themselves.

“This allows the crew to focus on the more ‘sensitive’ operations and leaves the critical resupply missions for autonomous operations without increasing fleet size or mix,” Sikorsky’s Vice President of Research and Development Mark Miller said in a statement published by the company.

The Office of Naval Research’s AACUS program is a bit more ambitious. AACUS, demonstrated in April at the Marine Corps’ base in Quantico, Virginia, gives helicopters the ability to not only fly unsupervised to a destination and back again, but also to land unsupervised. And AACUS operation isn't at the command of a pilot; instead a tablet-wielding enlisted man or woman is driving on the ground.

Unattended auto-landing capabilities are already a feature of many fixed-wing unmanned aircraft, such as the MQ-9 Reaper. But landing a helicopter in an unfamiliar location is a lot more difficult. There is a wide range of obstacles to be overcome and often a limited amount of space to work with for landing. In essence, it’s the equivalent of an airplane not just landing itself, but also then taxiing off the runway and pulling up to a gate.

To pull off that level of difficulty requires more than just the usual drone software. AACUS consists of about 100 pounds of hardware, including an onboard computer system and laser-based Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR), electro-optical, and infrared sensors. Using the combined sensor data, AACUS can model the landing zone and then pick the safest landing spot and approach at the destination to set down. And if the tablet operator has sent the helicopter to someplace without a safe landing zone, the system can send back a message requesting that he or she pick another spot.

Because it can land, the system could potentially be used for quick-response medical evacuation and rescue missions to carry troops out of harm’s way without having to prepare (and risk) a pilot. The system could also help piloted helicopters safely land in low-visibility conditions. And while one of the helicopters used in the test was a K-MAX, the system could be installed on any rotary-wing aircraft—including those already in the Marine Corps’ and Army’s inventory.

The next step isn't just aircraft that fly themselves; it's aircraft that handle everything else as well. DARPA's Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program, which just kicked off in April, seeks to automate all aspects of a pilot's role, from flying the plane to handling emergency situations. This would allow a single air crewman to act as "mission commander." In its announcement for the ALIAS "Proposer's Day," to be held May 7, DARPA's program team described the desired technology this way:

As an automation system, ALIAS should be capable of executing a planned mission from takeoff to landing, even in the face of contingency events such as aircraft system failures. ALIAS system attributes, such as persistent state monitoring and rapid procedure recall, will provide a potential means to further enhance flight safety. ALIAS should present a high-level, latency-tolerant interface to a human supervisor to enable operation and foster effective human-machine collaboration.

It’s not difficult to imagine how the technology in AACUS and OPBH, and eventually ALIAS, could be adapted to the wider aviation world. Advanced sensors and intelligent systems could make takeoffs and landings in low visibility much safer, and derivatives of the technology could easily be added to other types of dull but demanding aviation that require only occasional human oversight (like driving the plane to a cargo offload pad or to a gate). But considering the difficulties the FAA has in managing the flight of even manned aircraft, robotic airliners and cargo planes are probably decades from being a reality.