U.S Army Selects LIFT Aircraft and Near Earth Autonomy “to Develop Uncrewed Blood Delivery & Casualty Evacuation System” 

LIFT Air­craft announced this week that the com­pa­ny has been award­ed a con­tract by the U.S Army Appli­ca­tions Lab­o­ra­to­ry (AAL) to design a med­ical mul­ti-mis­sion mod­u­lar pay­load con­tain­er that can car­ry blood sup­ply and casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tions (CASEVAC). 

LIFT is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Near Earth Auton­o­my (NEA) to help one of the Army’s biggest chal­lenges — the need to autonomous­ly per­form these func­tions with­in the cru­cial “gold­en hour” — the crit­i­cal peri­od imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing trau­ma when rapid med­ical inter­ven­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es sur­vival rates. 

This con­tract is part of the Spe­cial Pro­gram Awards for Required Tech­nol­o­gy Needs (SPARTN) pro­gram. It uses Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) fund­ing as a pow­er­ful inno­va­tion tool which moves at the speed of busi­ness. SPARTN reduces time to con­tract and time to pay­ment so the Army can bring in the best com­pa­ny with the best solu­tion,” explains the release.

Major Rick­ey Roy­al, Project Man­ag­er at AAL, com­ment­ed, “The cur­rent prac­tice of rely­ing on crewed vehi­cles to pro­vide blood resup­ply and CASEVAC in bat­tle­ground areas has sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. The Army has iden­ti­fied a sig­nif­i­cant need for a mod­u­lar, mul­ti-mis­sion pay­load capa­ble of cli­mate con­trol and telemed­i­cine that can deploy via an autonomous aer­i­al and/or ground plat­form.” He added, “An autonomous solu­tion enables speed and effi­cien­cy in casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tions and deliv­ery of med­ical sup­plies.” 

Designed for rapid deploy­ment and inte­gra­tion with exist­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, the pay­load sys­tem being devel­oped by the part­ners is high­ly adapt­able, facil­i­tat­ing easy incor­po­ra­tion into var­i­ous trans­porta­tion meth­ods, while ensur­ing wide­spread usabil­i­ty. The pay­load is to utilise proven tech­nolo­gies to incor­po­rate vital signs track­ing mon­i­tors and will be cli­mate-con­trolled to main­tain blood tem­per­a­tures. 

Matt Chasen

Matt Chasen, Founder and CEO of LIFT, empha­sised, “After mul­ti­ple con­tracts with the U.S Air Force, we’re thrilled to con­tin­ue our work along­side the Army with broad impli­ca­tions for the wider Depart­ment of Defense. The selec­tion for this project under­scores our readi­ness to expand into broad defence appli­ca­tions. We are con­fi­dent that this col­lab­o­ra­tion will ulti­mate­ly save lives.” At the cul­mi­na­tion of the con­tract, LIFT will demon­strate the mod­u­lar med­ical pay­load includ­ing LIFT’s HEXA Car­go plat­form, already tri­alled by the USAF. 

NEA “has a his­to­ry of autonomous aer­i­al sys­tems for med­ical logis­tics, includ­ing the Army Com­bat Medic autonomous CASEVAC heli­copter pro­gram, and blood deliv­ery in Project Crim­son which was nom­i­nat­ed for the Asso­ci­a­tion for Uncrewed Vehi­cle Sys­tems Inter­na­tion­al (AUVSI) Xcel­lence in Mis­sion, Human­i­tar­i­an Award,” con­tin­ues the release. 

Near Earth has also devel­oped aer­i­al auton­o­my for oth­er sig­nif­i­cant defence logis­tics’ pro­grams, includ­ing USMC Logis­tics Con­nec­tor with Hon­ey­well and Leonar­do; USMC MARV-EL with Kaman; OSD Joint Capa­bil­i­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Demon­stra­tion Unmanned Logis­tics Sys­tem; Aer­i­al with SURVICE Engi­neer­ing; and USMC Autonomous Aer­i­al Cargo/Utility Sys­tem (AACUS) with Auro­ra Flight Sci­ences. 

San­jiv Singh, CEO of Near Earth Auton­o­my, remarked, “Our part­ner­ship focus­es on inte­grat­ing proven air­craft, auton­o­my and med­ical tech­nolo­gies to meet urgent bat­tle­field needs. We plan to devel­op, test and demon­strate the sys­tem over the next 12 months.” 

He con­tin­ued, “We believe that our approach of com­bin­ing exist­ing, proven sys­tems is the most effi­cient way to rapid­ly rev­o­lu­tionise bat­tle­field med­ical sup­port while min­imis­ing costs and delays.” Adding, “The soon­er we demon­strate the sys­tem’s effec­tive­ness and reli­a­bil­i­ty, the soon­er it can poten­tial­ly be out in the field, sav­ing lives.”

San­jiv Singh

Back­ground

The NEA tech­nol­o­gy allows air­craft to autonomous­ly take off, fly, and land safe­ly, with or with­out GPS. Their solu­tions enable aer­i­al mobil­i­ty appli­ca­tions for part­ners in the com­mer­cial and defence sec­tors. Near Earth “bridges the gap between aero­space and robot­ics with com­plete sys­tems that improve effi­cien­cy, per­for­mance, and safe­ty for air­craft rang­ing from small drones to full-size heli­copters,” explains the release. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.nearearth.aero

https://www.liftaircraft.com

(Top image: Con­cept visu­al of LIFT and Near Earth’s autonomous mod­u­lar med­ical CASEVAC pay­load sys­tem) 

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.