Tough to say, but it was inevitable with the invention of the autogyro following the death of the inventor Juan de la Cierva's friend due to stalling a fixed wing**. Of course prior to that Leonardo daVinci had some ideas, but the autogyro was the first practical rotary wing.
I did see that helicopters played a huge role in turning the tide for the North Vietnamese who had been hassled by them for a long time, until a badly designed mission saw several of them shot down. The Viet Cong were emboldened by the victory over a machine they could not dream of operating and using only small arms fire. Had the US gone into Viet Nam without helicopters a very different attitude might have been taken, either ending the involvement sooner or getting a lot more people killed.
Overall a general plus for aviation, though when they fail they do so spectacularly and, sadly, too often with the loss of lives. More saved than lost - certainly, but saving lives doesn't make the news so often, so there is a bias in what the general population knows.
I do expect that drones will take / are taking a number of operations away from helicopters, mainly for SAR, forward observation, clearly for "kamikaze" attacks, news gathering, agricultural monitoring and pesticide application, land sales photography; mainly anything that does not require going 100 knots for an hour at a time or a need for care of someone on board or delivery of someone on board. Of the latter, the drones are coming closer. The big ag drones can carry 100kg and can apply materials on a square meter basis within centimeters of the desired position.
I still recall during one of the Mississippi floods where a riverboat got loose and the news copters were competing for a good view. The one that made it first got detailed video of the superstructure of the riverboat being peeled off as it was forced under a bridge. The one that got there second had only a distant view of the first one.
This competition would not happen with drones; they could be just a few feet from the action like a swarm of bees. They can also use FLIR to actually enter smoke plumes if necessary to see how fires are going - not a thing a manned helicopter can do.
**Google finds no reference to the death. Puzzling as I recall reading about that, but after 5 decades it may be the author of what I read was fact-checked and the origin was just an interest in rotating wings.
Last edited by MechEngr; 13th April 2025 at 23:20.