Aerospace

Drones, UAS or RPAs—what’s the good word?

Commercial tiltrotor could shrink fleets, reduce the need for outlying bases and lower costs for oil and gas operations.

Real-time telemetry was gathered from 22 UAS flying simultaneously at six sites nationwide.

GE tries new tooling concepts and designs for CMC components, specifically for aircraft engines.

Paris and Cairo recently finalized new defense cooperation accords, including a deal for development and construction of a military communications satellite.

Solid structural health monitoring for composites is the next goal of the MRO industry, and advances are being made on many fronts.

Aurora Flight Sciences has flown a subscale model of its LightningStrike hybrid-electric distributed propulsion vertical-takeoff-and-landing experimental aircraft, selected in March to build Darpa’s high-speed VTOL X-Plane.

The demand for low-cost, rapidly available off-the-shelf countermeasures against small unmanned aircraft systems from both government and commercial customers seems to be growing.

Airlander airship approved to fly; NASA to validate RTCA’s UAS standards; Darpa tests drop-in sense-and-avoid; Armadillo’s Stig returns as Sarge; Rocket Lab moves closer to launch.

National Research of Canada says two new ice-particle detection technologies are ready for transition to industry to tackle the threat of high-altitude ice crystals causing engine rollback or flameout.

Germany’s E-Volo begins manned flight tests of its all-electric, 18-rotor Volocopter VC200 two-seat aircraft. Is it the vanguard of future personal aviation?

Breakthrough Starshot project aims to propel wafer-thin “nanocraft,” using powerful laser beams, toward Alpha Centauri.

Sales prices for Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s over the past 15 years have barely budged, even as fictional list prices have marched steadily upward.

Airbus Group and Siemens have signed a long-term collaboration agreement to develop hybrid-electric propulsion for small airliners, building on work already done on light aircraft.

Darpa contract for Northrop Grumman will develop MEMS-based miniature inertial measurement units to a level where they can replace ring-laser and fiber-optic gyros for guidance of precision weapons when GPS is denied.

Darpa spaceplane heads toward flight; Reusable hypersonic testbed needed; Carter touts faster CarterCopter; Battelle’s DroneDefender proves popular; Local Motors to crowdsource UAV for Airbus; Micro-UAS rules recommended to FAA

Given the scale of the challenges for big aerospace companies, one wonders how anyone succeeds.

Inflation-adjusted U.S. defense spending through the end of this decade will fall off after 2016 into a sustained period of roughly level annual budgets at about $600 billion.

An analysis of the latest UAS sightings reported to the FAA shows one-third came close enough to be potentially hazardous, but few required evasive action.

Toughening up GPS; bottle-to-throttle biofuel ready; robot repairs in GEO; autonomous Loyal Wingman wanted; Champ microwave missile puts gloves back on.

Darpa thinks volleys of low-cost UAVs launched and recovered in flight could help manned aircraft break though sophisticated integrated air defenses.

Supersonic travel attracts venture capital interest, but is it enough to enable a startup to break into commercial-aircraft manufacturing?

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker says the plan is not to change technology or direction, but to assure steady, long-term financing and move forward with NextGen quickly and decisively.

British company plans to support remote oil and gas and mining installations with fleet of hybrid airships.

Airbus Ventures CEO Tim Dombrowski on the new fund specifically and A&D’s overtures to tech generally.