Silent Arrow® Introduces Wide Body Variant
Progress continues for the unique, autonomous cargo glider.
LOS ANGELES, October 16, 2022 — Chip Yates, the founder and CEO of Silent Arrow, recently provided the New RC Soaring Digest with another update of their Silent Arrow autonomous glider program. In a surprising development, the new GD-2000 Wide Body is 60% larger than the GD-2000 and can carry up to 140cu/ft of payload weighing in at up to 635kg (1,400lbs) in their patented, single-use airframe.
The Silent Arrow is a tandem-wing, disposable, programmable automous vehicle developed to conduct military resupply and civilian disaster relief missions. It has an effective 14.6m (48ft), spring-loaded wingspan to be stowed inside the 3.96m (13ft) fuselage for compact transportation to the theater of operations.
With the wings in the stowed position during transport, the glider can be deployed from the C-17, C-130, CH-53, V-22 and other side-door aircraft. It can also deployed as a helicopter sling load with wings closed and static-line deployed, or wings already open and locked in flight position.
When ask what market imperative prompted the Wide Body concept to be developed, Yates said in a quote exclusive to New RCSD:
“I’m as surprised as you are about how big this thing is, but we are receiving direction from our government customers that conflicts of the future require the ability to fly in a large number of these Wide Bodies, set up an improvised capability under austere conditions, then just as quickly move on to the next objective.”
We’ll continue to follow this story which represents novel use of autonomous glider technology for both civil and military applications.
©2022 The New RC Soaring Digest Staff
Resources
- Silent Arrow in New RC Soaring Digest — The complete collection of stories to date.
- Silent Arrow — The official company website.
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