US Army gets ‘pilot-optional’ helicopter, weighs paratroopers for Iran

(Originally published March 24 in “What in the World“) The Pentagon may send paratroopers to fight Iran.

Military officials are mulling the dispatch of roughly 3,000 soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division “Immediate Response Force,” a combat brigade trained to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours. The paratroopers could be used instead of, or to support, the 2,500 U.S. Marines already en route to the Gulf, possibly to seize Iran’s key oil processing hub on Kharg Island.

The day is coming, however, when mortal men may be replaced on the battlefield by machines. The U.S. Army just received its first self-driving assault helicopter: while a human pilot can operate the latest version of the Black Hawk helicopter, the H-60Mx can also just fly itself. The company that makes the H-60Mx, Sikorsky, is also developing a truly no-hands, autonomous version called the S-70 UHawk.

While U.S. allies may be frustrated with America’s foreign policies under Trump, they may be stuck with its F-35 fighter jet. Both leading efforts to develop a non-U.S., next-generation fighter seem to have foundered. A Franco-Germany effort to develop a Future Combat Air System jet fighter, or FCAS, is stalled amid a disagreement between France’s Dassault and the German arm of Airbus. And Japan is reportedly increasingly frustrated by delayed investment from the U.K. in the next-generation fighter they’re developing jointly with Italy, the Global Combat Air Programme.