A160 Hummingbird shot down?

The US Army shoots it down that it is.

Check out the story from Wired.

This month, the Army planned to deploy to Afghanistan an unusual new drone: an unmanned eye-in-the-sky helicopter programmed to use high-tech cameras to monitor vast amounts of territory. But now the drone might be lucky to be deployed at all, as the Army has moved to shut down production — possibly ending the program forever.
That drone would be the A160 Hummingbird, which the Army planned to equip with the powerful Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, or Argus. But earlier this month, the Army issued a stop-work order — one step away from termination — to the drone’s developer Boeing. The reason? A high “probability of continued technical and schedule delays,” costs and risks that have “increased so significantly that program continuation is no longer in the best interest of the government,” said Donna Hightower, the Army’s acting product manager for unmanned aerial systems modernization.

Is this because the war in Afghanistan is winding down?

Is it DARPA hard and costing the Army too much time and money?

Or is it simply a bad idea and this is the best for all concerned?  I'll bet its all three.  But I would also guess that Boeing made a fundamental error...they should have made this optionally manned to iron out the problems instead of going all robot all the time.

I still have to wonder what a rotary winged UAV brings to the table that a predator doesn't...integrating the A160's payload onto an Air Force UAV can't be that hard.