X-Plane may impact future vertical lift program.

• Position: Global Defense

An aviation program within a top Defense Department laboratory could result in the development of new technologies and techniques that could be applied to the Army's future vertical lift program.

In March, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced that it had awarded a phase two contract for its vertical takeoff and landing experimental plane program to Aurora Flight Sciences.

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The X-Plane, as it has been called, must have a top sustained flight speed of 300 to 400 knots. Additionally, it has to improve aircraft hover efficiency from 60 percent to 75 percent.

"The goals of the DARPA VTOL X-Plane program are to really explore technology advances that enable a balanced design between vertical takeoff and landing and high speed," said Tom Clancy, Aurora Flight Sciences' chief technology officer and the head of its unmanned division. "The basic paradigm that has been true for a long time in aviation is that helicopters hover really well and fixed-wing airplanes are good efficient cruise and high-speed flight [platforms]."

The X-Plane is meant to combine efficient hover with highspeed flight, he said. Aurora's offering, which it calls Lightning-Strike, is unmanned and features an electric distributed propulsion system that consists of "integrated, distributed ducted fans that, combined with the synchronous electric drive system, would enable the design's potentially revolutionary hover efficiency and high-speed forward flight," a company statement said. The first flight test is slated for 2018.

Technology developed by Aurora and DARPA could be used in the Army's forthcoming future vertical lift program, said Leslie Hyatt, product director for FVL at the Army's program executive office for aviation.

The Army intends to replace thousands of its aging helicopters in the 2030s with a new family of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that could include light, medium, heavy and ultra-sized variants. Preceding the program is the joint multirole technology demonstrator, which will help refine requirements for FVL. In 2014...