Aurora to develop RPAs for USAF

Aurora's Orion UAV is designed to fly for 120 hr. at 20,000 ft., carrying a 1,000-lb. multi-sensor payload. 

Aurora Flight Sciences, headquartered in Manasses, Virginia, a company that designs and builds robotic aircraft and other aerospace vehicles for scientific and military application, has been selected by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for the Manufacturing Technologies for Remotely Piloted Vehicles (MaTeR) program. Over the next eighty-four months, Aurora will develop and improve manufacturing processes for all aspects of Remotely Piloted Vehicles/Aircraft (RPVs/RPA), which includes both the airborne and ground components.

Aurora's initial work will focus on affordable airframe production technology and manufacturing technology for propulsion systems. Aurora's team includes Textron, Rolls Royce North America, Goodrich Corporation, Honeywell Aerospace, Williams International, and United Technologies Corporation.

The head of Aurora's Research and Development Centre, Javier deLuis, said that the technologies currently being developed in the lab will help to lower the costs of future vehicles. "As the cost, complexity, and development time of new platforms threatens to eclipse our capability to support them, we must focus on technological innovation that will drive affordability."

The goal of the MaTeR program is to demonstrate the key manufacturing technologies in the areas of electronics, power and propulsion, advanced structures, and modeling and simulation that will significantly impact affordability, development schedules, and operational availability of Air Force RPA.