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Watch Video: Piasecki Achieves Breakthrough “With First Flight of Tilt-Duct VTOL Aircraft”

U.S‑based Piasec­ki Air­craft recent­ly announced the first flight of its proof of con­cept demon­stra­tion tilt-duct Aer­i­al Recon­fig­urable Embed­ded Sys­tem (ARES) Vehi­cle, reports a press release.

The flight, which con­sist­ed of two teth­ered hov­er flights, is the first step in a pro­gram to demon­strate the poten­tial of ARES “to rev­o­lu­tionise autonomous air­borne casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion (CASEVAC), car­go resup­ply, while pro­vid­ing oth­er mul­ti-mis­sion capa­bil­i­ties in sup­port of small dis­trib­uted com­bat units,” explains the release. It is a pro­gram spon­sored by the U.S. Air Force and Army under a USD37 mil­lion Fund­ing Ini­tia­tive.

ARES is a mod­u­lar mul­ti-mis­sion tilt-duct VTOL air­craft that can be oper­at­ed as an unmanned aer­i­al sys­tem (UAS) or with an option­al manned flight mod­ule. 

The release con­tin­ues, “It  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 are sup­port­ed by a com­mon Flight Mod­ule to deliv­er mul­ti-mis­sion flex­i­bil­i­ty with sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced over­all logis­tics foot­print and cost.”

The ARES lift­ed off from Piaseck­i’s West Heli­pad in Ess­ing­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia and achieved a sus­tained hov­er of around one minute before descend­ing. Upon land­ing, the team attached the U.S. Army’s Mobile Mul­ti­ple Mis­sion Mod­ule (M4) and con­duct­ed a sec­ond suc­cess­ful one-minute hov­er. These demon­stra­tions were fund­ed by an Army SBIR Sequen­tial Phase II con­tract and an Air Force TACFI Sequen­tial SBIR II award.

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John Piasec­ki, the com­pa­ny CEO com­ment­ed,  “Since its ori­gins as a DARPA con­cep­tu­al design project, Piasec­ki has led ARES through years of R&D, design iter­a­tions, com­po­nent test­ing, sys­tem lev­el val­i­da­tion, and more, to mature the tech­nol­o­gy lead­ing up to today’s achieve­ment.” 

He added, “After suc­cess­ful­ly expand­ing the aircraft’s flight enve­lope, we will imple­ment mod­i­fi­ca­tions to enable flight demon­stra­tion of a ful­ly autonomous CASEVAC and logis­tics resup­ply capa­bil­i­ty.”

ARES fea­tures Hon­ey­well Aerospace’s Com­pact Fly-By-Wire sys­tem, a light­weight but robust inte­grat­ed flight con­trol sys­tem. The release explains, “Designed to fit into the lim­it­ed space avail­able on small­er air­craft, the sys­tem pro­vides safe­ty-crit­i­cal flight con­trol capa­bil­i­ties typ­i­cal­ly found in much larg­er air­lin­ers and advanced fight­er air­craft. It enables pre­cise han­dling and sta­bil­i­ty across a wide range of flight con­di­tions, there­by enhanc­ing safe­ty and per­for­mance — and is espe­cial­ly advan­ta­geous for VTOLs, where space is at a pre­mi­um and weight effi­cien­cy is para­mount.”

Dave Shill­i­day, VP and GM of Honeywell’s AAM, remarked, “The Com­pact Fly By Wire in the ARES Demon­stra­tor not only show­cas­es the abil­i­ty of this tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port a future mul­ti-mis­sion VTOL air­craft, but also the coop­er­a­tion between Hon­ey­well and Piasec­ki in a fast-mov­ing pro­gram.” 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://piasecki.com/

(Images: Piasec­ki)

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