DARPA's new UAV X-plane competition
 

Phase 1 contracts for VTOL X-Plane program

(D. Szondy, Aviation News) Helicopters and other rotorcraft are impressive bits of technology, but the only place where they match the performance of fixed-wing aircraft is in bad 1980s television. That may soon change with DARPA announcing the selection of four companies to compete in the next phase of its Vertical Take Off and Landing Experimental Plane (VTOL X-Plane) program. The four companies are tasked with developing unmanned demonstrator aircraft designed to increase the performance of VTOL rotor aircraft while reducing their complexity. Rotorcraft can move in any direction, hover, and land on almost any flat surface. The problem is their performance is painfully limited with top speeds for operational craft below 150 kt (172 mph, 278 km/h). While it is possible for rotorcraft to set much higher speed records, it’s at the cost of range, efficiency, useful payload or simplicity of design. While some innovative designs that blend fixed-wing and helicopter platforms have emerged in recent years (most notably AgustaWestland's Avatar-esque electric tilt-rotor concept – Project Zero), attempts to make fundamental improvements to basic helicopter design and develop hybrid approaches have also proven difficult, as shown by the example of the MV-22 Osprey, whose history has been plagued by delays, technical problems, and orders of magnitude leaps in cost overruns.

DARPA’s US$130 million VTOL X-Plane program hopes to break this pattern and revolutionize VTOL flight by radically improving capabilities in vertical and cruise flight, with hopes of lowering mission times and improving the chances of military missions by reducing vulnerability to enemy attack. The plan it to achieve this by “cross-pollination” between the fixed-wing and rotary-wing technology. The idea is to reduce the complexity of the aircraft by using multi-purpose systems rather than separate systems for each function. This reduces the chances of failure, streamlines development, reduces costs, and saves space and payload weight. The four companies chosen by DARPA to go forward with designing the new demonstrator aircraft are Aurora Flight Sciences, Boeing, Karem and Sikorsky. They have been tasked to create a demonstrator that can maintain a sustained speed of 300 kt to 400 kt (345 mph, 555 km/h to 460 mph, 740 km/h), reach a hover efficiency of at least 75 percent, attain significantly better cruise lift-to-drag ratio and have the ability to carry a useful load of at least 40 percent of the vehicle's gross weight of 10,000 to 12,000 lb (4,535 to 5,443 kg).

"Designing an aircraft to perform a vertical takeoff, while maintaining adequate low-speed control, is challenging," says Dan Newman, Boeing Phantom Works Advanced Vertical Lift capture team lead. Sustaining efficient hover is also difficult, and adding a high cruising speed is even more challenging." The companies have already submitted designs and DARPA points out that though the project is concentrating on unmanned aircraft, the technology can also be applied to manned aircraft. In 2015, the next program milestone will see the four competing companies submit preliminary designs for evaluation with the aim of construction and performance testing sometime in 2017-18. “We were looking for different approaches to solve this extremely challenging problem, and we got them,” says Ashish Bagai, DARPA program manager. “The proposals we’ve chosen aim to create new technologies and incorporate existing ones that VTOL designs so far have not succeeded in developing. We’re eager to see if the performers can integrate their ideas into designs that could potentially achieve the performance goals we’ve set.”

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So they "rapid prototyped" a prop from the Terminator movie?

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More like the Hollywood movie ripped off the 1950's US aerospace industry- here is a list of all the VTOL machines that were never built (3/4 way down). The computer tech needed to run them has only recently been developed in the last ten years. They are very heavy on stability computation and heretofore nothing could work the controls equations fast enough to prove viable.

List of Total VTOL Aircraft

Yes, you produced a list of vtol aircraft. The point wasn't that there have not been vtol aircraft before, the point was that this one seems to fairly closely mimic the general design of the terminator HK vtol craft, from the V-tail to the outboard rotating engines. Because the computer ability and lightweight materials/batteries didn't exist, it was fiction. Now it's reality. To those that say we aren't spending enough on the military or research, or those that say we are losing our edge, you just have to watch a few of these videos or Boston Dynamics IMO to see how absolutely crazy and amazing the things are we can produce. I can't imagine being the enemy and watching a unit of "big dogs" or some other frightening mechanical droid come after you.

Ok, Hollywood sci-fi props are better than real science and education, you have a point. I am not sure what kind of point, but fine. I was hoping for a more thoughtful discussion of this type of aircraft along the lines of its impact on future wars, domestic parcel delivery, med-evac, future police work, job creation for pilots, and other silly stuff like that.

I think the point is that many things are and have been "imagined" before they are reality. In a few cases, they are so close to the "imagined" sci-fi device/vehicle/etc that it's amazing/scary.

As far as future wars, humans will be on the sidelines. Pilots eventually to, but both will be gradual movements (slower in the civilian sector). I doubt any current generations have to worry, but I'd bet that aerospace engineers are working now on unmanned systems that will change warfare forever.

We already have drone helos and we have some drone airplanes, this will be the first real combination of the two features one unmanned craft, namely speed and VTOL capability. We had a discussion a few months ago about how drones, or non-piloted UAVs, might integrate with manned aircraft (Amazon drones, should we worry?), and this VTOL/Osprey type drone could do it better than any other kind since it does not require a runway. A helipad maybe, but no runway. I doubt Amazon would be able to use drones as large as these VTOL x-planes when they are scaled up, but long range package delivery could make use of them and will almost certainly hold some interest in their arrival. For example, that new crate motor you want from Texas to your Washington home might be auto-loaded onto a VTOL drone and auto-offloaded at a local drone pickup point. Or to your place of business or home if you have a legal helipad there. I can think of other uses, but that would be a practical one. It is a little scary to visualize these things driving themselves around in the sky but it would solve a lot of problems with integrating drones and piloted aircraft.