Lectures of Opportunity: "History of Killer Robots at Sea"

About this lecture series

Lectures of Opportunity (LOOs) offer Naval War College (NWC) students, faculty and staff an opportunity to learn more about national and international socio-political subjects that may be of relevance to the NWC community.

Synopsis

The "Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter" (DASH) was developed in the late 1950s in order to bring more airborne anti-submarine capabilities to the US Navy surface fleet in response to a huge build-up of Soviet submarines. Many of the US Navy's WWII era surface combatants simply did not have the deck-space to embark a full size helicopter. With this in mind, the Gryodyne QH-50 DASH was born and over 700 aircraft were fielded in fleet by the early 1960s. Though the communications limitations of the time impacted on their operational success, versions were developed to carry torpedoes, depth charges and even a nuclear depth bomb variant! The concept of a shipborne light unmanned helicopter for surveillance would re-emerge fifty years after the QH-50's heyday in the form of the MQ-8 Fire Scout. The president of the Gyrodyne Helicopter Historical Foundation will speak about the history of these “cold-war killer-robots from-the-sea."