First landing on an aircraft carrier by an autonomous drone

The first unmanned aircraft to make an arrested landing on a carrier at sea is the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS), a technology demonstrator built by Northrop-Grumman (USA). The X-47B prototype made a fully autonomous landing on the carrier USS George H.W. Bush during trials off the coast of Virginia, USA, on 10 July 2013.

The X-47B differs from the current generation of operational military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs; commonly known as "drones") in that it operates almost entirely autonomously. There is no human pilot operating the aircraft from a remote-control station; instead, control is primarily "point and click", with the operator setting waypoints and programming the navigation system. The actual piloting of the drone, including take-off and landing, is handled autonomously with the drone's on-board computers communicating with air-traffic control systems.

Carrier landings are some of the most challenging operations undertaken by military pilots, requiring aviators to catch an arrestor cable on a pitching, rolling flight deck less than 20% of the length of a typical land-based runway. For naval aviators to qualify for "carrier qualified" status, the already highly skilled pilots have to carry out dozens of practice landings in the simulator and several weeks of real-world training.

The X-47B is not designed for operational use, though drones based on its design may go into service in the future.