- French aviation giant Airbus is making a tablet for a helicopter to fly with drone teams.
- It said the new tech's big feat is keeping a stable link between a fast-moving drone and helicopter.
- Airbus said it successfully tested the program with a Singaporean helicopter crew in January.
Airbus is trialing new software that allows helicopter crews to control a team of drones while the chopper flies at high speeds.
The company recently tested the technology, called HTeaming, in trials with an H225M helicopter operated by Singapore's air force and defense science and technology agency, said Victor Gerin-Roze, head of UAS business in the Airbus helicopters division.
"We were completely controlling the drone from the helicopter. For us, it's of course unique. Today, what we performed is a world first," Gerin-Roze told reporters on Thursday at the Singapore Airshow.
The software is part of Airbus' contribution to the surging industry for drone wingmen, which the world's biggest aircraft manufacturers are betting will be the future of air warfare.
The latest HTeaming trials were held in January and involved a simulated mission, tasking a Singaporean H225M crew with finding and rescuing a stranded pilot in the rainforest.
Airbus said it first deployed one of its uncrewed aerial systems, the 7-foot-long surveillance drone Flexrotor, to locate and identify the pilot.
The drone, which can fly at speeds of up to 85 miles per hour, then fed real-time data to a handheld tablet on board the H225M helicopter. The crew used that information to find and rendezvous with their rescuee, Airbus said.
Gerin-Roze said the Flexrotor and H225M were flying several kilometers apart during the mission, but they can remain connected at distances up to 20 kilometers, or roughly 12.4 miles.
"One of the big challenges was to keep the data link stable," Gerin-Roze said.
Airbus used a modem and four antennae to keep the helicopter and drone connected during the mission, as both aircraft were "flying in different directions with different altitudes," Gerin-Roze added.
The HTeaming software, announced in June 2025 at the Paris Airshow, is still in early development. Airbus said it last tested the system with one of its lighter helicopters, the H-135, with the Spanish Navy in May of that year.
The French aviation giant hopes that HTeaming will eventually help create a system that lets its customers fly a mixed fleet of automated fighters, recon drones, and wingmen.
Airbus is designing HTeaming to work with other firms' drones, allowing customers to mix its helicopters with third-party uncrewed aircraft.
Airbus' HTeaming tablet lets operators issue commands to drones by setting waypoints for them on a map, and it's not meant for piloting the drone itself.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
The tablet, hefty but light enough to use on your lap, is designed to allow helicopter crews to receive drones' video feeds, issue commands to the vehicles, and control the trajectory of their payloads.
The company is experimenting with other drone payloads, such as for data communications.
When asked if HTeaming has been developed to issue attack orders to drones that might carry weapons, Gerin-Roze said the company is exploring that option.
"To start the development, we do it without one, but as we said, stay tuned for this year," he said.
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