USAF “Awards USD37 Million to Piasecki Aircraft Corp” to Develop Next-Generation VTOLs and Hydrogen Propulsion Technologies

Piasec­ki Air­craft Cor­po­ra­tion, a U.S rotor­craft and aer­i­al vehi­cles com­pa­ny, announced this week, it has been award­ed a USD37 mil­lion mul­ti-year con­tract by AFWERX in con­junc­tion with the Air Force Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry (AFRL), as part of its Strate­gic Fund­ing Increase (STRATFI) pro­gram, reports a press release. 

The award will enable Piasec­ki to flight demon­strate its Aer­i­al Recon­fig­urable Embed­ded Sys­tem (ARES), tilt-duct ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (VTOL) unmanned aer­i­al sys­tem (UAS), as well as its hydro­gen fuel cell propul­sion tech­nolo­gies for VTOL and oth­er avi­a­tion appli­ca­tions.

John Piasec­ki, CEO of Piasec­ki Air­craft, com­ment­ed, “The STRATFI pro­gram plays a crit­i­cal role in advanc­ing emerg­ing Amer­i­can tech­nolo­gies and we are thrilled to receive this sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment. This new fund­ing will allow us to demon­strate ARES’ unique tilt-duct con­fig­u­ra­tion, which enables seam­less tran­si­tion between hov­er and fixed-wing for­ward flight — a tech­no­log­i­cal leap that would address crit­i­cal aer­i­al chal­lenges faced by the U.S mil­i­tary.” 

The mon­ey will also fund the demon­stra­tion of Piasecki’s zero-emis­sion hydro­gen fuel cell propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy for VTOLs, includ­ing a forth­com­ing PA-890 com­pound heli­copter.

John Piasec­ki

The Piasec­ki R&D pro­grams include:-

: Aer­i­al Recon­fig­urable Embed­ded Sys­tem (ARES) — ARES is a mod­u­lar mul­ti-mis­sion tilt-duct VTOL vehi­cle that can be oper­at­ed unmanned (UAS) or with an option­al manned flight mod­ule. ARES is designed with a small land­ing foot­print to enable ship­board and expe­di­tionary oper­a­tions as well as pro­vide embed­ded mul­ti-mis­sion C4I, ISR, com­bat, and logis­tics sup­port to small dis­trib­uted com­bat forces oper­at­ing over extend­ed dis­tances and in com­plex ter­rain. Rapid­ly-recon­fig­urable Mis­sion Pay­load Mod­ules deliv­er mis­sion flex­i­bil­i­ty that sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces over­all logis­tics foot­print and cost. 

The ARES Demon­stra­tion Vehi­cle was pro­duced in part­ner­ship with Lock­heed Mar­tin with fund­ing from DARPA. With fol­low-on fund­ing from the U.S Air Force and Army, Piasec­ki and Hon­ey­well are inte­grat­ing a triplex fly-by-wire flight con­trol sys­tem to ini­ti­ate ARES flight test­ing by the end of this year.

: Hydro­gen Fuel Cell Propul­sion Sys­tem — Piasec­ki is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Zeroavia, a leader in hydro­gen-elec­tric avi­a­tion, to devel­op and imple­ment its rev­o­lu­tion­ary High Tem­per­a­ture Pro­ton Exchange Mem­brane (HTPEM) hydro­gen fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy for PA-890 and oth­er VTOL appli­ca­tions. The PA-890 eVTOL  air­craft is expect­ed to be the first zero-emis­sion hydro­gen-pow­ered com­pound heli­copter. 

The slowed-rotor winged heli­copter is intend­ed for use in a vari­ety of mis­sions includ­ing Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices (EMS), deliv­ery of high-val­ue On-Demand Logis­tics (ODL), On-Demand Mobil­i­ty (ODM) per­son­nel air trans­port, and many oth­er com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions across the USD40 bil­lion com­mer­cial light heli­copter mar­ket. 

In addi­tion to zero car­bon emis­sions, the PA-890 eVTOL enables up to a 50% reduc­tion in direct oper­at­ing cost and reduced noise com­pared with today’s fos­sil fuel tur­bine heli­copters and, sig­nif­i­cant­ly, greater range com­pared with all-elec­tric heli­copters.

PA-890 Heli­copter

Val Mif­takhov, Founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, remarked, “High­er tem­per­a­ture fuel cells are a crit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er­ing improve­ments in spe­cif­ic pow­er and unlock­ing tru­ly clean propul­sion for larg­er fixed wing air­craft, but they will also enable rotor­craft and VTOL appli­ca­tions.” 

He con­tin­ued, “Col­lab­o­rat­ing on this project with a com­pa­ny of Piasecki’s her­itage and exper­tise in rotor­craft, with U.S Air Force back­ing, is a huge­ly excit­ing step in deliv­er­ing on our vision of hydro­gen-elec­tric engines in every air­craft.”

Ear­li­er this year, Piasec­ki announced that it acquired the for­mer Lock­heed Mar­tin Siko­rsky Heli­plex facil­i­ty in Coatesville, Penn­syl­va­nia, and will trans­form the 219,000 square foot state-of-the-art facil­i­ty into an advanced R&D and test­ing cen­ter for VTOL and UAS vehi­cles. The facil­i­ty, which includes engi­neer­ing, assem­bly, paint and fin­ish­ing, as well as a flight test and deliv­ery cen­tre, is expect­ed to attract close to 400 work­ers by 2028.

For more infor­ma­tion

piasecki.com

ZeroAvia.com

www.afwerx.com

www.afresearchlab.com

(Images: Piasec­ki)