Dufour Aerospace and RUAG to cooperate on unmanned aerial vehicles

Swiss eVTOL start­up Dufour Aero­space and RUAG will coop­er­ate on the devel­op­ment of Aero2, Dufour’s unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle with a tilt-wing rotor mech­a­nism that can take-off and land ver­ti­cal­ly like a heli­copter, but is claimed to fly as fast and ener­gy effi­cient­ly as a fixed wing air­craft.

RUAG will ini­tial­ly pro­vide engi­neer­ing ser­vices to Dufour, with the aim to devel­op into a long-term strate­gic part­ner­ship in devel­op­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and main­tain­ing eVTOL and com­po­nents, enabling both com­pa­nies to exchange tech­nol­o­gy and know-how in order to estab­lish suc­cess­ful prod­ucts and ser­vices in the mar­ket.

RUAG will assist with the design and test­ing of the struc­ture of the air­craft, the fur­ther devel­op­ment and test­ing of the propul­sion sys­tem, and the devel­op­ment and inte­gra­tion of avion­ics and auto­mat­ed flight sys­tems.

RUAG Busi­ness Area Air’s senior VP Thomas Kipfer said: “There is poten­tial for numer­ous syn­er­gies between Dufour and RUAG and we believe the eVTOL mar­ket will be trans­for­ma­tion­al for manned and unmanned avi­a­tion.

“We have been look­ing for an OEM part­ner to fur­ther devel­op and apply our tech­nol­o­gy and exper­tise for this mar­ket. With Dufour we have found a com­pa­ny with cred­i­ble tech­nol­o­gy in an advanced devel­op­ment stage, a strong team and a clear plan to become a key play­er in this mar­ket.”

Dufour Aero­space CEO and co-founder Thomas Pfam­mat­ter said: “This coop­er­a­tion with RUAG is an impor­tant mile­stone for Dufour Aero­space, with its expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge to sup­port our devel­op­ment pro­grams in mul­ti­ple areas.

“RUAG is a leader in aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer­ing, has state-of-the-art infra­struc­ture, and a great team of inno­v­a­tive and ded­i­cat­ed engi­neers. We are very pleased that RUAG believes in the future of hybrid-elec­tric tilt-wing air­craft.”
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In April, Dufour Aero­space estab­lished oper­a­tions in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da to devel­op the tilt-wing rotor mech­a­nism and to hire up to 30 soft­ware engi­neers focused on devel­op­ing sys­tems for its Aero2 and Aero3 eVTOL air­craft.

At the same time, Blue­ber­ry Avi­a­tion announced that it will pro­vide mar­ket­ing advi­so­ry and place­ment sup­port to Dufour Aero­space as part of a new long-term com­mer­cial part­ner­ship, and will also acquire 100 Aero2 and 100 Aero3 eVTOL air­craft.