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The venture money is betting that the e-VTOL technology can be weaponized. Small, disposable drones have been getting all the attention lately due to the war be
by nradov 6mo ago
The venture money is betting that the e-VTOL technology can be weaponized. Small, disposable drones have been getting all the attention lately due to the war between Russia and Ukraine. But longer term there are a lot of potential missions for larger VTOL combat aircraft — both drones and crewed.
- walrus01 6mo agoThe 'final' decision was recently made to go ahead with the massive project for this, which is eventually intended to replace the UH60/Blackhawk type platform. Traditional big money defense contractor stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_MV-75_Cheyenne_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_MV-75_Cheyenne_II
- nradov 6mo agoThe military operates more than one type of aircraft. I don't think an MV-75 will fit very well on an FF(X), for example.
- amluto 6mo agoI would guess that a military version would be a hybrid: electric motors as in all the e-VTOL prototypes, enough battery power to comfortably take off, land and maneuver in combat conditions, and a small hydrocarbon-fueled engine to recharge the battery while cruising.
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoWhat problem would a hybrid solve for military? Military doesn't care about emissions and this doesn't offer resilience like fully electric does (recharge anywhere, reliability).
- nradov 6mo agoThe military cares a lot about range, signature reduction, and especially fuel efficiency. Reducing fuel usage reduces the logistical train necessary to sustain units in the field. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2025/01/22/army-tries-out-next-gen-hybrid-tactical-vehicle-prototype-in-germany/ https://www.defensenews.com/land/2025/01/22/army-tries-out-n...
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoHow is it going to reduce fuel consumption by nearly doubling the weight?
- dghlsakjg 6mo agoDragging a trailer full of fuel seems easier than dragging a large generator and a trailer full of fuel.
- nradov 6mo agoHuh? The regular engine doubles as a generator.
- dghlsakjg 6mo agoOh, you’re talking about a hybrid system. I thought you meant all electric like the aircraft from the article. My mistake. That’s a ton of weight penalty (the most consequential tradeoff in aircraft design) so the design gains of being able put motors in weird places has to be significant. Once we have higher density batteries it becomes compelling since you can store power for bursty operations like VTOL while using an ICE engine that otherwise wouldn’t have the power, but currently it doesn’t pen out. You need an order of magnitude more energy density from batteries before you can come anywhere close to what combustion engines can do.
- amluto 6mo agoThe same problem that a hybrid architecture solves for ships: the ability to use physically small electric motors with very high power density that are mechanically decoupled from the rest of the vehicle. This lets a bunch of designs pull off neat thrust vectoring tricky with much simpler and lighter components than a mechanical thrust vectoring system would need. (Electric azimuth thrusters are becoming common in large ships for roughly this reason, too.)
- dzhiurgis 6mo ago> ships That's a tangent from most sensitive vehicle to weight to the _least_ sensitive one.
- booleandilemma 6mo agoWhy are larger drones better than smaller suicide drones that can have bombs attached to them and built by the thousands per day in a dark factory?
- walrus01 6mo agoRange, for one, if what you're referring to as a mental model is 15" prop size quadcopters with an artillery shell strapped to them. For use <50km. Now look at a photo of a human standing next to a shahed-136 size UAV for a totally different size scale. https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/11/in-europe-the-problem-is-deterrence-not-drones.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/11/in-europe-the-p...
- booleandilemma 6mo agoI see. Thanks for both your answers.
- nradov 6mo agoDifferent configurations are better for different missions. Small suicide drones have very limited range, weak sensors, and can't carry much cargo or a large enough warhead to take out hardened targets. Hopefully we'll never get into a conflict with China, but if we do the platforms will have to be much larger just due to the greater ranges involved.
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoCan we settle in the middle and trial them for cargo first? Seems obvious for deliveries.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> Can we settle in the middle and trial them for cargo first? There is an existing market for passenger eVTOL to and from airports. Using that as a beachhead makes way more sense than trying to develop a de novo niche.
- dzhiurgis 6mo agoOh market is def there. I mean validating technology on cargo.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> validating technology on cargo The tradeoff is you have to build a cargo business. That costs money and leadership attention. Racing for the beachhead, given sufficient access to capital, is the more focused strategy. (This is a good example of how bootstrapped versus financed companies can be radically different in their technical debts, time to market, culture and discipline around validating hypotheses.)
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- AngryData 6mo agoI don't see how these style of drone like aircraft could possibly be better for personnel or gear transport over a collective rotor helicopter. A bigger rotor is more efficient, can lift more, and can autorotate to a safe landing after taking the inevitable battle damage and losing power. I mean I could be wrong, im certainly not an expert in future military design and strategy, but I just don't see any advantages once you start scaling these to the size needed to move humans. The only potential I can see is multi-rotor designs being easier to learn to pilot over a collective rotor design, but I don't see any modern military considering a few weeks off a pilot's training being worth the trade off in range, capacity, and safety.
- nradov 6mo agoOne large rotor is obviously more efficient than multiple smaller rotors. Where e-VTOL aircraft at least have the potential to win for certain missions is more with cost and availability. Helicopters are extremely expensive and require constant maintenance, and tilt rotors like the V-22 are even worse. But an e-VTOL could potentially eliminate transmissions, clutches, drive shafts, swashplates, etc. Long term we'll see a mix of both technologies being used. As for survivability, we'll see. Any significant damage to the rotor systems will send most helicopters straight into the ground.