Vertical Flight: A New Technology Frontier

Lockheed Martin, with Thales and Leonardo, won a £269 million ($360 million) contract to develop and produce 10 airborne-early-warning (AEW) kits for the Royal Navy’s Merlin Mk. 2 helicopters. Under the Crowsnest program, all 30 Merlins will be modified to carry the Searchwater 2000 radar. 

The first U.S. Army Sikorsky UH-60L, upgraded to the UH-60V with a Northrop Grumman-developed digital cockpit, flew on Jan. 19, 2017. The Army plans to update around 760 of its L-model Black Hawks, most of them at the Corpus Christi Army Depot in Texas.

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. displayed a full-scale mockup of the planned 12-metric-ton-class Indian Multi-Role Helicopter (IMRH) at the Aero India show in Bengalaru in February. Now in preliminary design, the twin-turbine IMRH will have a payload of 3,500 kg (7,700 lb.) and capacity for 24 troops.

A Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopter armed with a pod-mounted Raytheon laser weapon shot an unmanned ground target in June tests at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, in partnership with the U.S. Special Operations Command and the U.S. Army Apache program office.

Europe’s MBDA conducted carriage-and-release trials of the new Sea Venom/ANL anti-ship missile from a Lynx helicopter in April, and in June performed the first firing from a Dauphin testbed helicopter. The Anglo-French Sea Venom is being developed to arm UK Royal Navy Wildcat and French Navy Panther and Caiman shipboard helicopters.

Ride-hailing giant Uber in April partnered with Aurora Flight Sciences, Bell Helicopter, Embraer, Mooney International and Pipistrel Aircraft to develop prototype electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) prototypes for urban air-mobility demonstrations planned in Dallas and Dubai in 2020. Aurora already has flown a subscale demonstrator for its distributed-propulsion eVTOL (pictured).

Kaman delivered the first K-Max external-lift helicopter produced since 2003 to China’s Lectern Aviation on July 13. The aircraft is one of two to be operated by Guangdong Juxiang General Aviation, primarily for firefighting. Kaman plans to extend resumed K-Max production at least until 2019.

German startup Lilium flew an unmanned prototype of its eVTOL aircraft on April 20 and secured $90 million in funding in September. The company plans to fly a five-seat production aircraft in 2019 and begin commercial air taxi service by 2025. The tandem-wing design has electric ducted fans on tilting flaps.

Silicon Valley startup Kitty Hawk, funded by Google co-founder Larry Page, in April revealed it was flying a prototype single-seat eVTOL aircraft designed to be operated as an ultralight without a pilot’s license and restricted to flying over fresh water. The production Flyer is planned to be available by the end of 2017.

Airbus unveiled a radical joined-wing and pusher-propeller configuration for its European Clean Sky 2 high-speed rotorcraft demonstrator, called RACER (for Rapid and Cost-Effective Rotorcraft), at the Paris Air Show in June. The compound helicopter has Safran RTM322 turboshafts and cruises at about 220 kt., 70 kt. faster than traditional helicopters.

Turkish Aerospace Industries in June unveiled its T625 medium twin-turbine helicopter, with a first flight planned for 2018 and certification by the end of 2020. The 6-metric-ton (13,200-lb.) aircraft is powered by two 1,370-shp LHTEC CTS800 turboshafts driving a five-blade main and four-blade tail rotor.

Russian Helicopters in July unveiled a mockup of the VRT500 light utility single, to be developed by subsidiary VR-Technologies. The 3,500-lb. helicopter has three-blade coaxial rotors and is expected to have a Western-sourced turboshaft engine. The company is aiming for production in 2020-21.

The Bell 525 Relentless super-medium helicopter returned to flight on July 7, having been grounded since the fatal crash of the first flight-test vehicle in July 2016. Bell is aiming for certification of the fly-by-wire twin-turbine helicopter in 2018.

Sikorsky’s VH-92A presidential helicopter flew for the first time on July 28, joining two engineering development models flown in 2015 and 2016. Based on the commercial S-92, the first of 21 operational helicopters is scheduled to enter service in 2020.

The Volocopter 2X eVTOL completed its first autonomous test flight in Dubai in September under a five-year program of  the emirate’s Road and Transport Authority to develop specifications and regulations for autonomous air taxis. In August, Volocopter raised $30 million in investments from Daimler and other companies to develop its 18-rotor battery-electric eVTOL aircraft.

Leonardo in October unveiled a new version of its AW189 super-medium helicopter, the first application of Safran’s 2,500-3,000-shp Aneto turboshaft family. A prototype entered flight testing in March, and Leonardo plans to certify the AW189K derivative with 2,500-shp Aneto-1K engines by the end of 2018. The new engine increases hot-and-high performance.