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This month, U.S. Special Forces Command is quietly taking delivery of a radical new drone: the Boeing A160T Hummingbird, which rewrites the rules for helicopters. Thanks to a remarkable piece of design, the Hummingbird can go further, longer, higher – and quieter – than anything else around.
The 24-hour endurance mentioned in Boeing's website is only the beginning: some developers have talked about 48-hour unrefueled flights – and a service ceiling going all the way up to 55,000 feet. Earlier this year an A160 was reported to have hovered out of ground effect at 20,000 feet.
So what are the new Special Forces birds going to be used for? According the Jane's, the Hummingbirds are expected to be fitted with a new ground surveillance radar called FORESTER (Foliage Penetration Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Tracking and Engagement Radar). This is another DARPA project which the developers say will "provide robust, wide-area, all-weather, persistent stand-off coverage of moving vehicles and dismounted troops under foliage."
It will be interesting to see how quickly the other services start buying their own Hummingbirds.