Sabrewing’s Rhaegal Cargo UAV Smashes World Record Payload on First Flight

Cal­i­for­nia-based, Sabrew­ing, announced this week that its RH-1‑A Rhae­gal (pro­nounced Rye-gull) VTOL air car­go drone has achieved its first hov­er flight while lift­ing a record-set­ting pay­load, reports a press release.

The pre-pro­duc­tion air vehi­cle, also known as the RG-1‑A Alpha mod­el, lift­ed a record-break­ing 829 lb pay­load, smash­ing the pre­vi­ous world achieve­ment for the dead-lift of any com­mer­cial, ver­ti­cal take­off, uncrewed air vehi­cle (UAV).

The release states, “The Rhae­gal Alpha air­craft is the world’s first autonomous car­go air­craft capa­ble of both ver­ti­cal and con­ven­tion­al take-off and is designed to take tons of car­go to any loca­tion on Earth, in almost any weath­er.”

Ed De Reyes, Chair­man and CEO of Sabrew­ing, com­ment­ed, “We are extreme­ly proud to have accom­plished this mile­stone. It’s been a long jour­ney to get here, but we were unwill­ing to com­pro­mise safe­ty or design.”

He con­tin­ued, “Our design and tests team, and our devel­op­ment part­ner, invest­ed tens of thou­sands of hours to make this mile­stone such a his­to­ry-mak­ing suc­cess.”

Ed De Reyes

The release goes on, “Major improve­ments to the blades, ducts, and shape of the shroud of the aircraft’s duct­ed fans allowed each duct to pro­duce 30 per­cent more thrust than it was orig­i­nal­ly designed to pro­vide. These improve­ments con­tributed to the aircraft’s abil­i­ty to lift the record-shat­ter­ing pay­load.”

And con­tin­ues, “The pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type air­craft weighed just over 2,700 lbs for the first flight and is capa­ble of a max­i­mum gross weight (with pay­load) of up to 3,100 lbs at alti­tudes of up to 22,000 feet and 200 knots. When tak­ing off con­ven­tion­al­ly, this air­craft has enough thrust to car­ry over 2 tons of car­go with the same range, alti­tude, speed, and effi­cien­cy.”

De Reyes remarked, “This is only a frac­tion of what this air­craft can car­ry. But it proves that we’re able to lift more car­go on our maid­en flight than any pre­vi­ous car­go UAV that has ever flown.”

The Rhae­gal air­craft uses a tur­bo-elec­tric dri­ve­train based on Safran’s Heli­copter Engines tur­bine-based motor, the Ariel 2E. The Ariel can use 50 per­cent sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel (SAF), and turns an elec­tric gen­er­a­tor which pro­duces near­ly 1 megawatt of elec­tric ener­gy that in turn then pow­ers elec­tric motors in each of the four duct­ed fans.

Oliv­er Gar­row

Oliv­er Gar­row, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer for Sabrew­ing, point­ed out, “We’re able to gen­er­ate more propul­sive ener­gy – much more effi­cient­ly – with a tur­bo-elec­tric dri­ve­train and duct­ed fans than with bat­ter­ies or direct­ly dri­ven by the tur­bine.”

He con­tin­ued, “The Safran motor is cur­rent­ly cleared to use 50 per­cent sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel (SAF). We expect to be one of the first air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers to use hydro­gen when Safran com­pletes test­ing on their motor in the next cou­ple of years.”

The air­craft was devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Safran (tur­boshaft motors), Leonar­do Aero­space (avion­ics), Toray (com­pos­ite mate­ri­als), Garmin (nav­i­ga­tion), Attol­lo Engi­neer­ing (LIDAR), Spi­der Tracks (remote posi­tion­ing), US Car­go Sys­tems (car­go floors) as well as soft­ware devel­op­ment by Cal State Chan­nel Islands, the Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, UCLA and Okla­homa Uni­ver­si­ty. The Rhae­gal is the world’s best-in-class, high­est fuel and main­te­nance effi­cien­cy car­go UAV on the mar­ket.

The Rhae­gal RG-1‑B Bra­vo pro­duc­tion air­craft is designed for first, mid­dle and last mile car­go deliv­er­ies. It can lift over 10 times more car­go than its clos­est com­peti­tor, fly 5 times far­ther, and oper­ate in any air­space, from a con­gest­ed city to the most remote loca­tion.

Sabrew­ing RG‑1 Rhae­gal Alpha

Rhae­gal is also capa­ble of a range of mis­sions besides heavy lift car­go includ­ing search and res­cue, fire­fight­ing, dis­as­ter relief, med­ical deliv­er­ies (includ­ing frozen vac­cines), and even fuel and water deliv­er­ies.

The Rhae­gal Bra­vo is the only car­go UAV that is capa­ble of car­ry­ing over ten dif­fer­ent Unit Load Device (ULD) car­go con­tain­ers, the same kind used by air­lines for car­go. The craft can even pow­er refrig­er­at­ed car­go con­tain­ers known as “reefers”, both on the ground and in the air, and has over 675 cubic feet of car­go space.

Sabrew­ing cur­rent­ly has pur­chase orders for 28 of its air­craft, des­tined for the World Food/World Health pro­gram, and anoth­er 102 firm orders, and let­ters of intent for over 400 air­craft. These orders rep­re­sent a USD3.2 bil­lion order book over the next 6 to 7 years. The com­pa­ny also has con­tracts with the US Air Force to study the use of autonomous car­go deliv­ery to aus­tere envi­ron­ments, and even a demon­stra­tion of casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion for up to 8 injured per­sons.

Present­ly, Sabrew­ing is work­ing with the Euro­pean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) to begin cer­ti­fi­ca­tion flight test­ing of its air­craft. The first 28 craft are due to begin deliv­er­ies to the first cus­tomer by the end of 2023.

Back­ground

Sabrew­ing was found­ed in 2016. The organ­i­sa­tion has over 98 years of air­craft design and man­u­fac­tur­ing expe­ri­ence, with the flight test team hold­ing 145 years of flight tri­al and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion expe­ri­ence with the FAA, EASA, CAA, Air Trans­port Cana­da, and sev­er­al oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies.

(Top Pic: RH-1‑A Rhae­gal)