July 2, 2011, will go down in military history as a day of great importance. The general public won't know it and the news did not get much coverage, but it is a massive step forwards for Unmanned Aerial technology:
an F/A-18 Super Hornet from US Navy squadron VX-23, fitted with software developed from the experimental drone UCAS-D, has performed the first ever fully automated carrier landing in history.
This Hornet had a pilot on board as a safety precaution, but the system landed the plane wholly autonomously on the deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower in the western Atlantic Ocean.
