Aurora Flight Sciences has revealed a high-speed, vertical-lift X-plane concept that the Boeing company is developing under a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
DARPA has selected Aurora and three other companies to participate in its Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) project, in which the teams will compete for a contract to build and fly an experimental aircraft with vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capabilities and a cruise speed of 400 to 450 knots. Initial Phase 1 contracts, which fund the conceptual design phase, were awarded to Aurora, Northrop Grumman, Bell Textron, and Piasecki.
“This X-plane will demonstrate that a high-speed, vertical-lift, blended-wing-body aircraft will provide superior flexibility and operational performance to the military in the future,” said Larry Wirsing, Aurora’s v-p of aircraft development programs.
Aurora’s X-plane concept, which the company revealed on November 15, features a fan-in-wing configuration—essentially a blended-wing-body (BWB) airframe with vertical-lift propellers. Boeing, Aurora’s parent company, already has two decades’ worth of experience with BWB aircraft under its belt. The aerospace giant previously worked with NASA and Cranfield Aerospace to design, build, and fly an experimental BWB aircraft under the X-48 program.
Boeing's Aurora Flight Sciences subsidiary has been developing uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) since 1989 and has been a leading partner in U.S. military programs such as the Global Hawk and Lightning Strike X-Plane. It was acquired by Boeing in 2017, and not long after the company revealed a technology demonstrator for its first passenger-carrying eVTOL aircraft, called the Boeing Passenger Air Vehicle (PAV). The PAV made its first flights in January 2019 and crashed during its fifth flight test in June. Although Boeing said flight testing would resume in 2020, the PAV has yet to fly since.
While the future of the PAV program remains uncertain, Aurora will continue to develop vertical flight technologies through DARPA’s SPRINT program, applying lessons learned from PAV to a new high-speed, vertical-takeoff-and-landing (HSVTOL) aircraft.
The other three contenders participating in the SPRINT program have not yet publicly announced any details about their X-plane designs, but looking at their other projects could offer a preview of what they have in store. Bell’s first HSVTOL concepts were revealed in 2021, and the Textron subsidiary is continuing to research and develop the technology under the U.S. Air Force’s Afwerx HSVTOL Concept Challenge.
Meanwhile, Piasecki is developing its Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System (ARES) tilt-wing eVTOL aircraft with fresh funding from Afwerx. Northop Grumman is the only other contender known to be working on a BWB aircraft; it teamed up with JetZero earlier this year to develop a full-scale BWB demonstrator as an air-to-air fuel tanker for the U.S. Air Force.
