Dufour Aerospace releases final Aero2 design for tilt-wing drone

Dufour Aero­space has released the final design for its Aero2 drone, an uncrewed, aer­i­al vehi­cle with a hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem and an aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly-effi­cient tilt-wing design. The Aero2 is the pre­cur­sor to the Aero3, a larg­er tilt-wing air­craft which could sup­port options for uncrewed or crewed oper­a­tions.

Simon Ben­drey, Head of Design at Dufour Aero­space said: “Aero2 is able to trans­port 40 kg over a dis­tance of 400 km. The struc­ture and sys­tems have to be safe and aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly effi­cient and I am proud of the hard work of our teams to lock in a design that will meet cus­tomers’ strin­gent require­ments.”

From the orig­i­nal pro­to­type, the design evolved from a con­ven­tion­al tail to an H‑tail with a larg­er fuse­lage and wingspan and a wing pro­file opti­mised for its like­ly mis­sions, such as crit­i­cal goods trans­port, aer­i­al sur­vey­ing beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) and pub­lic safe­ty appli­ca­tions.

All flight crit­i­cal sys­tems of Aero2 are ful­ly redun­dant, which will enable oper­a­tions in uncon­trolled air­space over sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, as per EASA’s Spe­cif­ic Assur­ance and Integri­ty Lev­el IV (SAIL IV).

Once EASA has defined require­ments and means of com­pli­ance for SAIL VI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Dufour plans to apply to this stan­dard which will enable oper­a­tions over pop­u­lat­ed areas. Dufour is test­ing both in sim­u­la­tion and in real-world con­di­tions at its facil­i­ties in Switzer­land.

Dufour is part­ner­ing with Suter Indus­tries to cre­ate its hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem now being test­ed, and will be inte­grat­ed into X2.3, the final pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type. In late 2022, Dufour announced the largest civil­ian drone pur­chase in US his­to­ry, made with Spright, the drone divi­sion of Air Meth­ods. Spright will pur­chase 40 Aero2 with options for an addi­tion­al 100 units.

Joseph Resnik, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Spright said: “Dufour Aero­space is work­ing hard to devel­op the Aero2, and we have full con­fi­dence in their abil­i­ty to deliv­er their inno­v­a­tive prod­uct.”

Dufour Aero­space is now order­ing mate­ri­als required to build X2.3, the last Aero2 pro­to­type before the entry-into-ser­vice air­craft. X2.3 will be able to demon­strate the full flight enve­lope and the per­for­mance of the hybrid sys­tem. Flight test­ing of X2.3 is expect­ed to start ear­ly in 2024. The start of series pro­duc­tion of Aero2 is planned for 2025.

In Jan­u­ary, the com­pa­ny closed a Series B financ­ing round led by Vista Glob­al.

Dufour Aero­space Attracts New Invest­ment From Vista to Accel­er­ate Expan­sion