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The Ares demonstrator completed its second tethered hover with the Piasecki-developed M4 multi-mission pod attached.
Piasecki Aircraft has conducted the first tethered hover flights of the Ares tilt-duct vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) demonstrator, more than a decade after it was selected to develop the uncrewed aircraft under a DARPA project that was later canceled.
The proof-of-concept Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System Demonstration Vehicle lifted off from Piasecki’s West Helipad in Essington, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 6 for a 1-min. tethered hover flight. Upon landing, the U.S. Army’s Mobile Multiple Mission Module (M4) was attached to the flight vehicle and the Ares conducted a second 1-min. tethered hover.
Piasecki says the tests demonstrated the ability of the Ares flight module’s Honeywell triplex fly-by-wire control to sustain a stable hover in multiple configurations and a dynamic ground environment.
The Ares concept was originally developed for DARPA’s TX Transformer project to demonstrate a roadable aircraft—a four-seat tactical vehicle able to lift off from a road to fly over obstacles, terrain, ambushes and roadside bombs.
Teamed with Lockheed Martin, Piasecki proposed a twin-turboshaft, tilt-duct, (VTOL) flight module that could carry different types of mission modules and be flown uncrewed or optionally piloted.
In 2014, the team was awarded a contract to build the Ares demonstrator. But DARPA and the U.S. Marine Corps ended investment in the program in 2019, before the completed aircraft had flown, citing significant cost overruns and delays.
Lockheed withdrew from the partnership, taking with it the vehicle’s flight control hardware and software. But Piasecki continued to seek funding from elsewhere while Honeywell stepped in to supply its commercial Compact Fly-By-Wire system.
Piasecki kept the project going on a shoestring and secured funding from the U.S. Air Force and Army to fly the demonstrator. In November 2023, the company was awarded a Strategic Funding Increase (Stratfi) contract worth $37 million, including matching private investment to advance development of the Ares as well as work on hydrogen fuel cell propulsion for helicopters.
Under the Stratfi contract awarded by the Air Force’s AFWerx innovation unit, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Army Medical Research and Development Command, Piasecki plans to expand the Ares’ flight envelope and then modify the aircraft to enable demonstration of autonomous casualty evacuation and logistics resupply capability.
“Ares creates a new baseline for VTOL technology applied to heavy-payload, time-critical logistics crucial for dispersed operations,” Barth Shenk, AFRL program manager, says in a statement.
“The Air Force was hugely helpful in funding the development of a new flight control system,” CEO John Piasecki told Aviation Week in a January interview. “We’ve spent the past three years in doing that on a shoestring and so the award of the Stratfi program was a big deal because that gives us the resources to take the aircraft to flight.”
The Ares is powered by a pair of 1,000-shp-class Honeywell HTS900 turboshafts mounted in the center wing section and driving a pair of tilting ducted fans mechanically via shafts. Outboard wing sections attached to the ducts tilt with the fans and provide additional lift in forward flight.
The tilting ducts fans provide lift in vertical flight, propulsion in forward flight and control in all phases of operation. Ares is tailless and monocyclic, longitudinal-only pitch control on the fan blades is used to trim the module in pitch while vanes in the duct exhausts are used to vector fan thrust for control.
Developed by Piasecki for the Army Telemedicine and the Advanced Technology Research Center’s Medical Robotics and Autonomous Systems Division, the M4 is a prototype transportation pod designed to be attached to the Ares flight module and providing troop transport, cargo resupply or patient evacuation.
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