Military scientists are designing pilotless combat helicopters capable of carrying out air strikes with minimum input from their controllers on the ground.

The aircrafts could be in service with the US army by 2012.
They will be almost undetectable to radar, able to distinguish between hostile and friendly forces and to locate and destroy hidden enemy positions by day or night in all weathers. Scientists claim the helicopters will have the capacity to take autonomous decisions with little guidance from human controllers.

Sensors will enable them to identify concealed and camouflaged targets and to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

Unmanned aircraft have been used by British and American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were first designed for reconnaissance purposes in the mid-1980s, but the first use of them as attack aircraft was in November 2002, when a CIA-controlled Predator killed six suspected al-Qaeda members in the Yemen.

Via The Telegraph.