VerdeGo Aero Gains Air Force USD1.24 Million Contract “to Advance Turbine Hybrid-Electric Powerplant” 

VerdeGo Aero announced this week, it has been select­ed by AFWERX for a Phase II Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) con­tract to the tune of USD1.24 mil­lion, reports a press release.

This con­tract focus­es on the VH-4T-RD Tur­bine Hybrid-Elec­tric Pow­er­plant to address the most press­ing chal­lenges in the Depart­ment of the Air Force (DAF). 

The release explains, “The Air Force Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry and AFWERX have part­nered to stream­line the Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) and Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) process by accel­er­at­ing the small busi­ness expe­ri­ence through faster pro­pos­al to award time­lines, chang­ing the pool of poten­tial appli­cants by expand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to small busi­ness and elim­i­nat­ing bureau­crat­ic over­head by con­tin­u­al­ly imple­ment­ing process improve­ment changes in con­tract exe­cu­tion.”

It goes on, “The DAF began offer­ing the Open Top­ic SBIR/STTR pro­gram in 2018 which expand­ed the range of inno­va­tions the DAF fund­ed and now on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2024, VerdeGo Aero will start its jour­ney to cre­ate and pro­vide inno­v­a­tive capa­bil­i­ties that will strength­en the nation­al defense of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” 

David Eich­st­edt, VP of Prod­uct Man­age­ment at VerdeGo Aero, com­ment­ed, “The high pow­er den­si­ty of the VH-4T will pro­vide the per­for­mance need­ed to deliv­er the range, speed and pay­load required to make the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric air­craft com­pelling and prac­ti­cal.” 

Con­struct­ed around an exist­ing heli­copter tur­boshaft engine, the VH-4T-RD will gen­er­ate 380 kW of elec­tric­i­ty. VerdeGo is cur­rent­ly con­struct­ing the first pro­to­type with tri­als begin­ning next month. A future pro­duc­tion ver­sion is expect­ed to pro­duce 415 kW. 

Dave Spitzer, VerdeGo’s VP of Prod­uct Devel­op­ment, remarked, “The main goal is to achieve suit­abil­i­ty for flight test­ing in exper­i­men­tal, unmanned appli­ca­tions.”

He con­tin­ued, “Hybrid-elec­tric pow­er is real­ly a require­ment for mil­i­tary-focused elec­tric Ver­ti­cal Take­Off and Land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft since mil­i­tary mis­sions typ­i­cal­ly involve round trips. Bat­ter­ies alone can’t pro­vide the nec­es­sary range, espe­cial­ly since charg­ing infra­struc­ture doesn’t exist in remote loca­tions where charg­ing infra­struc­ture is lack­ing.” 

Back­ground

Found­ed in 2017 and based at the Embry-Rid­dle Aero­nau­ti­cal Uni­ver­si­ty Research Park in Day­tona Beach, Flori­da, VerdeGo Aero is com­mit­ted to rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing aero­space tech­nolo­gies with cut­ting-edge propul­sion solu­tions. The com­pa­ny spe­cialis­es in advanced hybrid-elec­tric and bat­tery-elec­tric propul­sion tech­nolo­gies. 

Dave Spitzer

VerdeGo Aero’s col­lab­o­ra­tive approach with air­craft devel­op­ers, cou­pled with pro­pri­etary analy­sis tools, accel­er­ates the con­cep­tu­al design phase, and posi­tions the com­pa­ny as an impor­tant part­ner in the indus­try. 

For more infor­ma­tion

verdegoaero.com

(Top image: VerdeGo Aero)

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