Silent Arrow® Wins New US Air Force Contract
Significant order placed for smaller scale, ‘swarm’ variant of the GD-2000 precision guided cargo delivery glider.
LOS ANGELES, November 29, 2021 — In a story RC Soaring Digest has been closely following since March of this year, Silent Arrow® of Irvine, California just announced a significant new contract with the US Air Force based on a new variant of their commercially successful GD-2000 cargo delivery glider. From their press release:
Silent Arrow today announced the United States Air Force, through the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), has awarded the company a contract entitled “Guided Bundle Derivative of Silent Arrow® for Side Door and Palletized Swarm Deployment at High Speeds and Altitudes” effective November 12, 2021.
In order to provide more flexibility and mission effectiveness, between three and four of these smaller scale, approximately 225kg gliders will be put into a ‘bundle’ and deployed as a unit. Each glider is capable of carrying approximately 160kg of payload and is just one metre in length. Once the bundle has departed the delivery aircraft, the gliders will separate and each will be able to carry out their own, independent, autonomous flight plan.
While leveraging the experience of Silent Arrow’s larger scale GD-2000 cargo glider, this new appoach also enables a wider range of delivery aircraft and modes: from the side door of a civilian Cessna Caravan ideally suited for humanitarian missions, right through to the US military’s logistics workhorse, the C-17 Globemaster wherein the bundle will be dropped from the aircraft through the rear cargo door.
In a statement following the announcement aviation pioneer Chip Yates, founder and CEO of Silent Arrow®, said:
“We’d like to thank the U.S. Special Operations community, the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Army and various other organizations who signed on to support this award for a new life-saving cargo delivery drone. We look forward to an exciting flight test program in 2022 and quickly getting this new capability into the hands of the warfighter and disaster relief organizations alike.”
The new aircraft will be manufactured in the USA at Silent Arrow®’s facility in Irvine, California. Testing will occur at the Pendleton UAS Test Range in Pendleton, Oregon.
RCSD will continue to track this exciting project — one of the few using commercialized glider technology — as it continues to evolve and will bring RCSD readers the latest, breaking news when its available.
©2021 The NEW RC Soaring Digest Staff
Resources
- Silent Arrow® Company website.
- Air Force Research Laboratory
- Pendleton UAS Test Range
- Autonomous Glider Technology Wins Air Force Contract RC Soaring Digest, March, 2021
- Update on Silent Arrow RC Soaring Digest, June 2021
All images provided courtesy Silent Arrow®. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
