While marketing a breakthrough vertical lift design, one quickly learns that civil market opportunities are predicated on the development and sale of a military product. Aviation history shows...
...that major innovations are first developed for and used by the the military, including for example fixed wing (Wright Brothers), rotary wing (Sikorsky), and jet engine (Whittle) aircraft.
One also learns that the economic and operational value of a breakthrough in vertical lift performance is most evident for larger payloads. Small payloads can be easily catapulted into the air on a lightweight fixed wing airframe, and then recovered by catching the aircraft in mid-flight with a net or a cable.
Of all the US military services, the U.S. Navy was the first to fund Mono Tiltrotor research. Baldwin Technology Company, LLC presented its early concepts as being scalable to any sized payload and operable as either manned or unmanned systems. The Office of Naval Research contracted with Baldwin for a concept study to address Seabased Logistics and Ship to Objective Maneuver expeditionary missions. The study showed that the Mono Tiltrotor concept offered breakthrough performance compared to legacy rotorcraft concepts for payloads of from 2 tons up to 20 tons.
The lead service within the Department of Defense (DoD) for the maturation of rotorcraft science and technology is the US Army. From a DoD rotorcraft market perspective, the Army technical community is crucial to success. Baldwin Technology Company, LLC was contracted by the Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) to design a Mono Tiltrotor technology demonstrator, predict its performance, demonstrate with flying models its basic functions, and validate the design and its predicted performance. This work succeeded in bolstering and amplifying upon the Navy study conclusions.
The US Marine Corps (USMC) has found that the performance characteristics of the Mono Tiltrotor technology demonstrator design satisfy emerging operational needs. USMC Headquarters approved an official need statement for a Cargo Unmanned Aircraft System (Cargo UAS), and provided additional funds to the Office of Naval Research for further refinements and operational assessments of the Mono Tiltrotor design as a Cargo UAS.
Another emerging military market for the Mono Tilitrotor is as a multi-role cargo/attack aircraft. The US Army is studying technology and concepts for a Joint Multi-Role (JMR) Helicopter, and is considering the Mono Tiltrotor in its work.
Beyond the military markets, the potential civil markets include: long range, high speed, offshore oil platform transportation; direct offload of containerships while underway to deep inland customers; long range fire fighting; self deployable heavy lift construction; and high speed civil or personal transportion between city centers.
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