Unmanned jet lands aboard US Navy carrier in historic first

     
An unmanned US jet carried out a maneuver on Wednesday long considered the most challenging in naval aviation - landing aboard an aircraft carrier - in a milestone that lifted expectations about basing drones with reconnaissance and strike capabilities on ships.    

A Northrop Grumman X-47B aircraft nicknamed "Salty Dog 502" slipped out of a cloudy sky off the Virginia coast after a flight from Patuxent River Naval Air Station and dropped its tailhook to snag an arresting cable on the deck of the USS George H.W. Bush sailing in the Atlantic Ocean.    

"It's not often that you get a chance to see the future, but that's what we got to do today," said Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who witnessed the landing and likened it to the first manned aircraft landing on a carrier a century ago.    

The achievement came as the Navy mulls the role that new ship-carried drones may play in the future for the US military, while some experts question whether these unmanned aircraft are needed by the Navy at all.    

The Salty Dog is one of two experimental X-47B aircraft built by Northrop Grumman as part of a program to test the feasibility of integrating unmanned aircraft into carrier operations, which program director Rear Admiral Mat Winter called "the most dynamic and demanding" environment in the Navy.    


REUTERS