aeronautics We sat down with representatives from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and Sikorsky divisions to discuss and understand the company’s ambitions for the future of autonomous military capabilities.
Lockheed Martin first entered the unmanned domain in the 1960s, producing the M-21, a specially configured variant of the Lockheed A-12, and the D-21 surveillance drone, designed to be launched by the B-52 Stratofortress bomber.
By the 1990s, Lockheed Martin was developing fully autonomous aircraft such as the RQ-3 DarkStar. The DarkStar was one of the first unmanned aerial vehicles to utilize the Williams FJ44 turbofan, currently used in the Anduril YFQ-44A Fury and Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat.
Today, Lockheed Martin, along with its renowned rotary wing-focused subsidiary Sikorsky, is bringing forward concepts for how autonomous technology can best be integrated into militaries around the world to deliver better performance, efficiency and affordability.
At the center is the ‘One LM’ culture. This ethos focuses on maximum autonomous system compatibility between different platforms across all domains. Operators who are familiar with one type of autonomous Lockheed Martin product can apply that familiarity to all others, with the underlying software architecture shared across autonomous aircraft of all shapes and sizes (Group 1 through Group 5), as well as autonomous ground and underwater vehicles.
A new level of underwater capabilities has arrived.
The LampreyMMAUV™ moves fast, evolves quickly, and delivers an autonomous, adaptable power below the surface designed to take on tomorrow’s missions head-on.#UnderseaWarfare #Autonomy #DefenseInnovation pic.twitter.com/CfiNhsxSv7
— Lockheed Martin (@LockheedMartin) February 9, 2026
Michael Biorn, formerly of the U.S. Air Force, and Ramsey Bentley, formerly of the U.S. Army, now bring extensive experience in real-world combat deployments to Lockheed Martin. speaking aeronautics and defense oneHe said interest in autonomy among international customers is becoming much broader. This includes concerns about fixed-wing and rotary-wing autonomy.
The company’s partnership with the Department of Defense (company representatives use the Trump administration’s unofficial name for the Department of War) on the Autonomous Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA) is seen as beneficial to both U.S. and international interests. A-GRA requires that autonomous software be as platform-agnostic as possible. Lockheed Martin’s autonomous systems are therefore designed to be ‘plug and play’, enabling seamless integration between in-house and third-party products.
Cross-platform architecture allows features developed for one platform to be implemented very quickly on other platforms. For example, the way autonomous software reacts to unfamiliar situations could be applied in much the same way to very different platforms, such as the Sikorsky U-HAWK and Lockheed Martin Vectis.
@LockheedMartin A scale model of the Vectis would allow you to compare it to the F-35. That looks like it will be huge. pic.twitter.com/kfZsYiCB5n
— The Aviationist (@TheAviationist) July 22, 2026
Reusing existing platforms into autonomous vehicles is a particular focus, along with developing new designs. One of the most notable examples of this is the Sikorsky U-HAWK, based on the ubiquitous UH-60/S-70 Black Hawk. The F-16 VISTA’s successful transition to the AI-powered X-62 is an example of how even an airframe built to carry a crew can be transformed into a fully autonomous platform.
Introducing the S-70UAS U-Hawk.#AUSA #AUSA2025 pic.twitter.com/43hXoxYFG7
— LMEvents (@LMEvents) October 13, 2025
Conversions along these lines open further avenues to increase affordability and mass, especially for overseas customers where this is a key concern. Different customers require different sets of missions, which in turn require different autonomy requirements. Lockheed Martin said it was “ready to meet your specific requirements.”
Future trials are planned to expand the autonomous system’s ability to operate in real-world environments outside of a clean, controlled test area. The HAVE REMY program is said to be currently working with “clean” and “pure” data. The next step will see it working with “unfiltered” data to make autonomy more effective in real-world situations.
Autonomy also plays an important role in crewed platforms, whether it is to increase capabilities without increasing crew workload or to add to existing safety measures when boarding an aircraft. The Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto-GCAS), available on F-16 and F-35 aircraft, has saved 13 pilots and 12 aircraft to date, the company said.
This is a declassified video of the U.S. Air Force F-16’s Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (GCAS) saving an aircraft and a pilot who lost consciousness while pulling 8.4Gs. Note that the aircraft maintains 9.1G as it exits the dive to the ground. pic.twitter.com/r4m3GJbMN2
— U.S. Army Clip (@usmilihist) July 24, 2026
More announcements about Lockheed Martin’s autonomous developments are expected to come. The company can confirm that it is still fully participating in the U.S. Air Force’s Cooperative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, but no further details are available at this time. Lockheed Martin lost the contract for Increment 1 of the program, which John Clark, Skunk Works general manager at the time, said was due to the company’s proposal providing too many gold-plated features that missed the U.S. Air Force’s economic criteria.
