Aerospace

Unmanned-aircraft news: Disaster relief by drone; Autonomous air taxi plans; Hacking hobby UAS; Debating the drone risk.

Demagogue politicians and pundits can’t rail against machines—the Luddite Rebellion ended 200 years ago. Instead, trade makes a convenient scapegoat.

Revelations that Google co-founder Larry Page is personally funding not one but two “flying-car” startups puts spotlight on widening efforts to bring a new class of aircraft to market.

Montreal is home to the third-largest commercial aerospace cluster in the world, and Quebec’s provincial government is moving to expand and diversify an industry that is critical to the local—and national—economy.

Technology news from ILA Berlin: Airbus advances hybrid helicopter; Bauhaus designs city-center STOL port; THOR, a 3-D-printed, Airbus rotating VTOL hybrid airship; Airbus wants your ideas.

Airbus firming up design of a refined, optimized son of X3 that could pave way for a compound helicopter product.

The unfolding revolution in the automotive industry is less about research than development—spotting and bringing together an array of externally sourced technologies.

Sikorsky’s entry into DARPA’s VTOL X-Plane competition may not have been selected, but the company sees missions for an unmanned aircraft that can operate from small-deck warships with high speed and long range.

A portable tactical robot carries a multi-shot sidearm to remove threats from contested areas.

As the U.K. gets ready to vote on its EU membership, the British aerospace industry is going through its own crisis of identity

Latest phase of Office of Naval Research autonomous resupply program tackles challenges of wire detection, terrain classification and GPS-denied navigation.

Rolls-Royce’s Trent 7000 engine is designed to reduce specific fuel consumption by 10% compared to the Trent 700.

Big response to Airbus UAV challenge; Russian unveils quad tiltrotor UAV; Airbus refines high-speed helicopter; coating protects U.K. carrier decks; Rice deicer repels water; solar-powered Sun Flyer rolls out.

Now that all the major engine manufacturers are using additive manufacturing (AM) to print metal parts for their newest engines, what’s next?

Bitter experience led the U.S. Army to plan a 20-year program to field an advanced high-speed rotorcraft. Industry insists it can move faster—and needs to, to protect the program from budget changes.

The timing coincides with the 2017 imposition of new Stage 5 noise restrictions. Aerion will have five years to present an actual aircraft for final approval.

Once classified, the U-2’s Senior Year Electro-optical Reconnaissance System—UTC Aerospace Systems’ SYERS—has added capabilities while spawning derivatives that equip a range of platforms.

Raytheon’s MTS is the sensor ball on a wide range of platforms. Now the company is leveraging that real estate to bring onboard new targeting capabilities.

The defense industry has seen some very impressive stock price moves due to investor willingness to fund growth.

When completed in 2018, the Blue Abyss space-environment simulation pool will be the largest in the world.

DARPA uses machine learning advances to improve automatic target recognition, helping pilots make decisions in high-speed combat against enemy air defenses.

UCAV technologies pose new challenges for flight testing, including safety and security.

Boeing moves into development of the Active Parallel Actuator Subsystem to enable Chinook helicopters to be flown to their performance limits while improving safety and reducing wear and tear on components.

The HIFiRE program is designed to explore the fundamental science of hypersonic flight and pave the way for future generations of high-speed propulsion systems, vehicles and weapons.

Vertical flight in the news: Boeing’s Phantom Swift looks ahead; Lilium unveils electric VTOL; AVX and Karem advance FVL designs; AHS and Sikorsky announce new prize; Closer look at Leonardo’s AW169.