The U.S. Army Applications Laboratory (AAL) has awarded Lift Aircraft a $1.65 million contract to design a modular container that could be integrated with multiple air and ground vehicles to carry payloads such as medical supplies and wounded troops needing to be evacuated. The VTOL aircraft developer announced the contract on October 1 and said it is partnered with Near Earth Autonomy to develop a system that could be operated autonomously in a variety of military applications.
According to Lift, the multi-mission unit is intended to have a payload limit of 300 pounds. It will have a vehicle-agnostic architecture to allow it to be easily installed on multiple platforms.
The contract requires Lift to demonstrate the payload unit being transported by multiple vehicles. These will include its own Hexa cargo platform, which has already been evaluated by the U.S. Air Force.
The FAA has approved Hexa as being compliant with the agency’s Part 103 rules and cleared for public aircraft operations. Lift has produced 17 of the aircraft to date and operates these in its own training and rental vehicle fleet.
“The current practice of relying on crewed vehicles to provide blood resupply and casualty evacuation in contested areas has significant challenges,” said Major Rickey Royal, contracting officer with the AAL. “The Army has identified a significant need for a modular, multi-mission payload capable of climate control and telemedicine that can deploy via an autonomous aerial and/or ground platform.”
Near Earth has previously been involved in developing autonomous operations technology for medical logistics applications. These include the Army Combat Medic autonomous casualty evacuation helicopter program and the U.S. Marine Corps’ Logistics Connector project with Honeywell and Leonardo.
According to Near Earth’s CEO, Sanjiv Singh, the partners will develop, test, and demonstrate the system for the U.S. Army over the next 12 months. “We believe that our approach of combining existing, proven systems is the most efficient way to rapidly revolutionize battlefield medical support while minimizing costs and delays,” he said. “The sooner we demonstrate our system’s effectiveness and reliability, the sooner it can potentially be out in the field, saving lives.”