These Self-Flying Helicopters Team Up to Fight Fires and Save Lives

[Narrator] If your idea of an autonomous vehicle

is some pod puttering around your city,

you need to think bigger and fierier.

This helicopter fights wild fires.

No human needed.

It's called K-MAX, and it's Lockheed Martin's answer

to a growing problem.

Since the turn of the millennium,

wild fires have been wreaking havoc in the U.S.

The fire season is longer, and the damage is more severe.

In 2015, the U.S. spent more than two billion dollars

battling the flames.

Six firefighters died on that fight.

So the answer, Lockheed says,

is getting the human out of there.

Autonomous and unmanned aircraft

don't put lives in the danger zone.

And they don't have to cater to human weaknesses

like a need to sleep or eat.

At a demo in upstate New York,

Lockheed showed of four unmanned aircraft

that joined forces to beat back fires

and save human lives.

First up, the Indago Quadcopter

flies over the area in question

using infrared and visible light cameras

to pick out the hot spots.

It passes those coordinates along to the K-MAX,

a cargo helicopter Lockheed retrofitted to fly itself.

K-MAX heads out, stopping first

to fill its bucket from a nearby pond.

When it reaches the fire line,

it dumps the H2O, drenching the ground

to contain the flames.

Holding back a fire is one thing.

Keeping everybody safe is another,

so Lockheed fires up the Desert Hawk.

And, surprise, this hand launched

surveillance drone spots a lost camper

behind the fire line.

And so it was up to another unmanned helicopter,

this one dubbed, SARA, to make the rescue.

SARA does most of the flying work, itself.

It can even identify a safe landing zone,

which is great for getting to people in tight spots.

Lockheed's drones are already helping

fight fires in Australia,

and company reps say K-MAX and SARA

could join them doing the work for real

and in the U.S. in as little as three years.

They can't take off soon enough.