Sabrewing Aircraft reveals its Rhaegal cargo drone in final event of ‘Agility Prime’

Sabrew­ing Air­craft unveiled its Rhae­gal car­go drone in the final event of the US Air Force’s ‘Agili­ty Prime’ eVTOL pro­gramme on Fri­day.

The com­pa­ny is the man­u­fac­tur­er of the world’s first heavy-lift, long-range and unmanned car­go air­craft, and CEO Ed De Reyes and Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Oliv­er Gar­row unveiled the Rhae­gal from its hang­er facil­i­ty in Hay­ward, Cal­i­for­nia, as part of a live stream on the Agili­ty Prime web­site.

De Reyes said: “Today is a day of firsts, not just for the US Air Force but for Sabrew­ing as a com­pa­ny. With the help of our part­ners, Sabrew­ing has been able to cre­ate some­thing that is unique and exists no-where else on Earth.

“Start­ing with a very basic design, we con­tin­ued to refine and sculpt the aero­dy­nam­ic shape to come up with a lift-to-drag ratio of 25:1 — cer­tain­ly the high­est of any VTOL and even high effi­cien­cy air­craft as well. We had to be able lift a large pay­load and fly at high alti­tudes to be able to keep away from tall moun­tains in heavy thun­der­storms.”

De Reyes added that Sabrew­ing spent months speak­ing with air car­go car­ri­ers, overnight pack­age deliv­ery com­pa­nies and oth­er car­go trans­porters, to deter­mine what fea­tures an air­craft had to pos­sess in order to make them buy and oper­ate one.

Unveil­ing the Rhaegal‑A air­craft, which is strict­ly a test vehi­cle, he said: “Even though it is half the size of the Rhaegal‑B, it can still car­ry a greater pay­load than any oth­er VTOL UAV on the mar­ket — up to one met­ric tonne.

“The Rhaegal‑B — our pro­duc­tion air­craft — will have a VTOL pay­load of 5,400 pounds and CTOL pay­load of more than 10,000 pounds. Both the Rhaegal‑A and Rhaegal‑B have the abil­i­ty of fly­ing at 22,000ft, which is in a very sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed air­space, and at speeds of about 240mph. Both air­craft can also take-off and land in severe weath­er con­di­tions, such as high winds and severe heat or cold.”

He also used the roll-out to announce that Sabrew­ing will be part­ner­ing with Safran Heli­copter Engines on the propul­sion sys­tem for its hybrid-elec­tric Rhaegal‑B car­go drone. Both air­crafts will be pow­ered by tur­bo-elec­tric dri­ve­trains, using two Safran tur­bocharged engines which pro­duce 2.8 gigawatts.

“We use all the pow­er that is avail­able, and don’t store any on board the air­craft, De Reyes said. “This pro­vides greater effi­cien­cy and bet­ter fuel mileage if you don’t have to car­ry heavy bat­ter­ies and take up the weight that would nor­mal­ly be tak­en up by pay­load.”

The Rhae­gal has been designed to open new loca­tions and deliv­er car­go where no fixed-wing or heli­copter can go, and to land in loca­tions where there is no pad or land­ing infra­struc­ture. It can land in soft snow, sand and even marsh land envi­ron­ments, because of high flota­tion tyres.

The Rhae­gal B will car­ry two LD1 car­go con­tain­ers, four LD2 con­tain­ers or two LD3 con­tain­ers — all ful­ly loaded to max­i­mum capac­i­ty.

Dur­ing the announce­ment, De Reyes also announced that Sabrew­ing Air­craft has been award­ed a con­tract under the ‘Agili­ty Prime’ pro­gramme, after secur­ing a AFWERX Small Busi­ness Inno­v­a­tive Research (SBIR) Phase II con­tract worth $3.25 mil­lion. This will test the pro­to­type air­craft and equip­ment in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways.

The ‘Agili­ty Prime’ eval­u­a­tion of Sabrewing’s air­craft includes the aircraft’s Detect And Avoid sys­tem (DAA), as well as test­ing to deter­mine if the air­craft can oper­ate in an envi­ron­ment where accu­rate GPS sig­nals are jammed or unavail­able.

The eval­u­a­tion includ­ed sim­u­lat­ing pay­loads, loca­tions and eval­u­a­tions of the per­for­mance of the air­craft – includ­ing casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion (CASEVAC) demon­stra­tions with sim­u­lat­ed casu­al­ties.

Sabrew­ing has already had more than 65 orders for the Rhae­gal, along with 250 let­ters of intent from com­pa­nies, once type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is com­plete. Cus­tomer deliv­er­ies for the Rhae­gal A will begin in Jan­u­ary 2021 and con­tin­ue through­out the year, with Sabrew­ing being able to build and deliv­er as many as 2,000 air­craft per year.

And De Reyes added that the mil­i­tary ver­sion of the Rhae­gal will be known as the VQ‑X ‘Aleut’, in recog­ni­tion of the part­ner­ship between Sabrew­ing and the Aleut Com­mu­ni­ty of St Paul Island (ACSPI) in Alas­ka.

“We thank the peo­ple of St Paul Island and the Aleut com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al, for their con­tri­bu­tion to native com­mu­ni­ties, as well as for pro­vid­ing with the hon­our of lend­ing us their noble name for our air­craft,” he said.

To watch the unveil­ing in full, vis­it www.agilityprime.com