From Battlefield to Brushfire: DARPA Just Delivered an Autonomous Black Hawk to the Army — and Opened a SBIR for Wildfire Response

On March 20, at a ceremony at Fort Eustis, Virginia, a Black Hawk helicopter rolled off a tarmac and into the Army's inventory. That alone would not be remarkable — the military has operated Black Hawks since 1979. What made this one different is that it can fly itself.

The H-60Mx is the first optionally piloted Black Hawk delivered to the U.S. Army under a technology transition agreement with DARPA. Equipped with Sikorsky's MATRIX autonomy suite, the aircraft can execute entire missions — from preflight checks through landing — without a human touching the controls. It can respond to simulated system failures mid-flight. It can be supervised remotely from a ground station. And it represents the culmination of a decade-long research program that is now branching in a direction few anticipated: fighting wildfires.

While the Army received its autonomous helicopter, DARPA simultaneously has an open SBIR XL solicitation inviting small businesses to build autonomy applications for the same platform — not for combat, but for emergency services, starting with wildfire suppression. (Granted News)

The dual-use story here is not theoretical. It is happening in real time, and it opens a significant funding pathway for small businesses working at the intersection of autonomous systems, emergency response, and AI.

A Decade of ALIAS

The Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System — ALIAS — began as a straightforward DARPA challenge: could you build a removable automation kit that would turn any existing military aircraft into an optionally piloted vehicle? Not a new airframe. Not a clean-sheet drone design. A bolt-on system that could retrofit the thousands of helicopters already in the military's fleet.

Sikorsky won the primary contract and developed MATRIX, a modular autonomy architecture that functions as what the Army describes as "a highly advanced digital co-pilot." The system replaces the standard mechanical flight controls with a fly-by-wire electronic system, then layers on perception, planning, and decision-making software that can manage complex flight operations across the full mission envelope.

The program hit its signature milestone in 2022: the world's first uninhabited flight of a full-size Black Hawk helicopter. The aircraft took off, navigated a multi-waypoint route, responded to injected system failures, and landed — all without a human aboard. It was not a demonstration flight in benign conditions. It proved the system could handle the unexpected.

Since then, the ALIAS program has logged thousands of autonomous flight hours across both the S-76 commercial platform and the UH-60 military variant. The technology matured through iterative flight testing at Sikorsky's development facility in West Palm Beach, Florida, and at multiple government test ranges.

What the Army Gets

The H-60Mx delivered to Fort Eustis is not a production helicopter. It is an experimental testbed — a flying laboratory that the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) will use to mature the technology for eventual fleet-wide integration.

The aircraft operates in multiple modes. It can fly fully autonomously on pre-programmed missions. It can be supervised remotely, with ground-based operators monitoring progress and intervening only when necessary. It can operate in a reduced-crew configuration, where a single pilot handles oversight while MATRIX manages flight dynamics. Or it can fly conventionally with a full crew, the autonomy suite providing backup and situational awareness.

The modular architecture is what makes this genuinely significant for the broader defense ecosystem. MATRIX is built around a Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows third-party developers to integrate new sensors, mission applications, and autonomy behaviors without modifying the core flight system. This is not a closed system. It is designed to be a platform.

Stuart Young, DARPA's ALIAS program manager, described the delivery as "a testament to the power of government and industry partnership to advance technology." But the more consequential statement came from the Army side: the H-60Mx will serve as the primary testbed for the Strategic Autonomy Flight Enabler (SAFE) program, which targets fleet-wide integration across hundreds of Black Hawk helicopters.

The implication is clear. This is not a one-off technology demonstration. The Army intends to make autonomous flight a standard capability across its rotary-wing fleet — and the technology pathway runs directly through the ALIAS architecture that small businesses can now build on.

The Wildfire SBIR XL

While the Army evaluates the H-60Mx for combat and logistics missions, DARPA opened a parallel track through its SBIR XL mechanism. The topic — ALIAS Missionized Autonomy for Emergency Services — seeks small business proposals for autonomy applications that adapt the same MATRIX-equipped UH-60 platform for civilian emergency response, beginning with wildfire suppression.

This is a Direct-to-Phase II opportunity, meaning DARPA is looking for companies that already have relevant technical maturity — not early-stage concepts. Applicants must demonstrate existing preliminary results, prototypes, or prior work in autonomy that can be integrated with the ALIAS/MATRIX architecture.

The technical scope spans three critical areas: Human-Machine Interfaces, Integrated Sensing and Cyber, and Trusted AI and Autonomy. The capstone scenarios DARPA defined reveal the ambition:

Fixed burn suppression. An autonomous helicopter plans and executes water or retardant drops on a prescribed burn area, using wind-aware and terrain-aware routing to maximize effectiveness while avoiding ground crews.

Multi-aircraft coordinated wildfire suppression. A reconnaissance aircraft identifies fire lines and relays targeting data to suppression aircraft, which autonomously coordinate drops for maximum containment. This is not single-aircraft autonomy — it is multi-vehicle teaming in a dynamic, hazardous environment.

Autonomous cargo sling delivery. Resupply operations to remote fire camps using autonomous sling load management — one of the most difficult and dangerous helicopter operations in any context.

Personnel recovery. Urban rooftop extraction scenarios where an autonomous helicopter navigates complex urban terrain to evacuate personnel under time pressure.

Each scenario requires a functional prototype that integrates with the ALIAS/MATRIX stack, demonstrated first in high-fidelity simulation and then in live flight tests. The Phase II period of performance is 12 months with a 12-month option — a tight timeline that reinforces DARPA's preference for companies with existing capability rather than blank-slate development.

The Texas Connection

DARPA's wildfire ambitions are not happening in a vacuum. In August 2025, the agency partnered with the Texas A&M University System on a $59.8 million initiative to establish a testbed for autonomous helicopter wildfire response. The program placed MATRIX-equipped helicopters at Texas facilities for year-round testing in conditions that approximate real wildfire operations — high temperatures, unpredictable winds, smoke-degraded visibility, and terrain challenges.

Texas was a strategic choice. The state experiences wildfire conditions across multiple seasons and geographic zones, from the piney woods of East Texas to the grasslands of the Panhandle. The Pantex fire in February 2024, which burned over a million acres, demonstrated the scale of wildfire threat that exceeds conventional suppression capabilities.

The Texas A&M partnership provides infrastructure that SBIR awardees will likely access during their development and testing phases. Companies selected under the ALIAS Missionized Autonomy SBIR will find a ready-made ecosystem of testing ranges, simulation environments, and domain experts that dramatically lower the barriers to development.

Why This Matters for Small Businesses

DARPA's SBIR XL mechanism offers something unusual: direct access to a production-grade autonomy platform with a defined transition pathway. Unlike many SBIR topics where the path from research to deployment remains uncertain, the ALIAS ecosystem has a clear customer in the Army, a commercial partner in Sikorsky, a university research infrastructure through Texas A&M, and now a civilian application domain in wildfire response.

The SBIR's opening and closing dates remain pending the completion of SBIR/STTR program reauthorization, which President Biden is expected to sign into law imminently after both the Senate and House passed the legislation in March. Once the reauthorization is effective, DARPA will set final submission deadlines.

Companies working in autonomous systems, computer vision, multi-agent coordination, sensor fusion, or emergency response technology should be preparing proposals now. The Direct-to-Phase II structure means DARPA wants to see existing capability, not PowerPoint slides. Companies that have demonstrated autonomous navigation, cooperative control, or sensor-driven decision-making in adjacent domains — agricultural drones, maritime autonomy, industrial robotics — may find their technology directly transferable to the ALIAS platform.

The export control environment is strict. This is ITAR-controlled technology, and all proposals must address foreign national involvement and technology protection plans. But for qualified U.S. small businesses, the opportunity is substantial: the chance to build autonomy applications on a military-grade platform that is simultaneously transitioning to civilian wildfire operations.

The ALIAS program proved that a helicopter can fly itself. The Army just accepted the proof. Now DARPA is asking small businesses the next question: what else can an autonomous helicopter do? For companies with the technical chops to answer, Granted can help translate that capability into a competitive SBIR proposal before the solicitation window closes.