DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has announced a competition for ANCILLARY (AdvaNced airCraft Infrastructure-Less Launch And RecoverY eVTOLs), or electric Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicles. (That’s about as tortured an acronym as we could cram into a lead paragraph.) The goal, to develop a Class 3 unmanned VTOL aircraft capable of flying all-weather missions from ships or land, has been responded to by several industry leaders. These have been winnowed to six “finalists” who will craft demonstration models of their respective designs. DARPA’s announcement includes the following: “The UAS would be able to launch and recover from ship flight decks and small austere land locations in adverse weather without additional infrastructure equipment, thus enabling expeditionary deployments. Unlike large VTOL systems, the small UAS size would allow many aircraft to be stored and operated from one ship creating a tactical beyond-line-of-site (BLOS) multi-intelligence sensor network capability.” The Six Finalists Phase Ia of the competition reduced the number of …
