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tiltrotor

Robot tiltrotor boxcar may fly Navy supply missions

The vertical takeoff and landing tiltrotor is yet another aerial configuration the military would like to add to its unmanned-aircraft inventory.

One experimental model, the Mono Tiltrotor (MTR) by Baldwin Technology, is intended to integrate a coaxial rotor, a folding lifting wing system with a lightweight airframe and sophisticated kinematics to deliver a robotic flying box car. The U.S. Navy wants the MTR, or something similar, to deliver cargo to Marines on the ground.

The unit, referred to generically as Cargo UAS (for Cargo Unmanned Aircraft System), should be autonomous, to the extent that it can take off and … Read more

Osprey in Iraq: No mishaps

The Pentagon hasn't been saying much about what's up with the Osprey in Iraq. That could be because it doesn't want to jinx what seems to be, after the first three months of deployment, a success story for the long-controversial tilt-rotor aircraft.

(By contrast, try getting it to stop crowing about the performance of a different breed of new aerial technology, unmanned aerial vehicles such as the Reaper.)

Since arriving at Al Asad Airbase last fall, the 10 MV-22 Ospreys of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 have accumulated more than 1,600 hours of flight time, carrying … Read more