DARPA Do-It-All Drone Among New VTOLs Nearing Flight « Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary: A bevy of new vertical take off and landing (VTOL) aircraft conceived to take the military beyond the speed, range and altitude limits of helicopters are scheduled to fly over the next two years. None looks more like science fiction becoming science fact than a sort of flying candy crane formerly known as “Transformer.”
What is now called the Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System (ARES) is being built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin’s famed Skunk Works with Piasecki Aircraft of Essington, Penn., under a $77 million DARPA contract. Lockheed is providing the software, Piasecki the hardware.
The hardware is a 41-foot span, unmanned flying wing in a tiltrotor configuration. Two ducted proprotors about eight feet in diameter, embedded near a stubby fuselage, will swivel up to let ARES take off and land like a helicopter and tilt forward to let it fly like an airplane.
The fuselage will be able to carry various plug-and-play payload modules – cargo, sensors, life support gear, even remote-control ground attack weapons are among the ideas — and deliver them to troops on austere battlefields or let those troops employ them.
