Cool article with photos and a video of the X-47B autonomous UCAV’s first flight a couple of days ago:
You could pretty easily miss the rather massive significance of the first flight of Northrop Grumman’s X-47B yesterday. On one hand it just looks like another flying-wing military aircraft. That much it certainly is… but it’s a whole lot more than that. The X-47B is an unmanned aircraft, and while that’s fairly common these days, this one is not like your regular Predator-style. The X-47B is actually autonomous, meaning that there isn’t a ground-based pilot sitting in a room somewhere acting as pilot, it’s actually the programming and the onboard computers that are in control. And then, to take it all up one more notch, the intended purpose for this aircraft is to operate autonomously off of real aircraft carriers with the U.S. Navy. Now there’s a challenge for ya!