Lt. Gen. George Flynn, the Marine Corps’ top requirements officer, told reporters Tuesday in Washington, D.C., that he expects the service to field an unmanned cargo helicopter next year to support troops in remote locations. The Corps last year awarded contracts to Boeing and a Kaman Aerospace-Lockheed Martin team to demonstrate their respective unmanned vehicles. Boeing successfully completed its A160T Hummingbird demo in March at the Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, while the Kaman-Lockheed team showed off its K-MAX there in early February. (See Expanding World of Unmanned Air from the Daily Report archives.)
The Pentagon is significantly bolstering airpower near Venezuela, dispatching the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to Latin America, it said in an Oct. 24 statement. The announcement came just hours after U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers and other U.S. assets flew near the Venezuelan coast on Oct. 23.
