Boeing Hummingbird Drone Crashes In Belize

garymortimer writes "Still not reported elsewhere, Flight International reports another crash of the Boeing Hummingbird helicopter UAV. The Hummingbird A160 is in development, but test flights already demonstrate successively greater endurance, higher altitudes, more extensive autonomy, and greater payload. The program has ambitious goals of a 2,500-mile (4,000 km) range, 24-hour endurance, and 30,000 ft (9,100 m) altitude. Flights are largely autonomous, with the aircraft making its own decisions about how to fly itself so as to meet certain objectives, rather than relying on real-time human control. Maximum speeds are over 140 knots. The aircraft is 35 ft (11 m) from nose to tail and has a rotor diameter of 36 ft (11 m).[2] Until recently it was powered by modified Subaru automotive engines, but newer versions fly with the Pratt & Whitney PW207D turboshaft."

Re:The problem

[MachDelta]

I'm actually kind of curious what Subaru motor they were using. Wikipedia says the PW207D puts out a max of 572shp, so I imagine the Subaru motor must have been fairly extensively modified because their consumer offerings top out around 320hp in the EJ25. An extra 100 ponies out of an EJ isn't hard, but much more than that gets expensive real fast.

Re:Always nice to see the war effort...

[regularstranger]

Or swarming a natural disaster area with resources.

2 of them crashed here

[markdueck]

I don't see other posts about this but they had 2 of those Hummingbirds here. Both were equipped with some new radar technology that is able to 'look' through canopy and see people. http://www.7newsbelize.com/sstory.php?nid=17648&frmsrch=1 [7newsbelize.com] - The oval shaped box underneath the bird is the radar. It rotates to be perpendicular during flight. The point was to test the radar and also the bird at the same time. It's supposed to be quite enough for 'bad guys' not to hear it when it's flying at 10,000 feet. Belize was chosen for the testing because of the ideal canopy we have here. Word on the street is that the first one crashed because it ran out of fuel.

Re:2 of them crashed here

[brinic]

More info on the DARPA developed radar being tested here. [darpa.mil] The A160T program has had a few crashes over the last few years, even before it got to Belize. That said, it is a challenging project, so some accidents are inevitable.