Shape of things to comeU.S. military to be offered flying hover bike

Published 18 September 2008

An innovative Virginia company says its flying — or hovering — bike may be suitable for military missions; the machine offers vertical takeoff, range, and largely hands-off autopiloting

Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora Flight Sciences, an innovative company made known for its efforts on crewless stratocruiser planes, both hydrogen fuelled and, more radically, of sun-harvesting Z-Wing tiltship configuration, says that it is working on a machine which could function as a flying, hor hovering, bike. The company has also been working for a while on its Excalibur ducted-fan vertical takeoff aircraft.

Lewis Page writes in the Register that the Excalibur is offered as a fairly normal high-autonomy aerial weapons platform (normal, that is, among late-generation killer robots). Its prime mover, as is the case with most high-performance aircraft, is a turbine. What makes it stand out among ducted-fan craft is that the fans themselves are driven electrically using turbine-generated juice rather than a mechanical gearbox, thus saving on weight and allowing the main drive to be optimized for propelling the hover-plane in forward flight using lift from its wings.

Aurora has so far seen the Excalibur functioning in normal times as an attack craft, carrying traditional killbot favorites as the Hellfire missile and Viper Strike pocket-size smart glider bombs. Excalibur could face tough competition in this role from helicopters both manned and unmanned which can probably outperform it in the hover, and from winged aircraft which can probably match or exceed its cruise and loiter performance.

The company, however, suggests that the innovative winged hovership could carry out other missions, making the most of its small footprint and vertical landing abilities. In particular, company representatives have told the press that they reckon Excalibur could carry a single human passenger — perhaps a special-forces operator. Given the craft’s high level of autonomy (it requires no remote piloting, even for landing and takeoff) this passenger would not need to be a qualified pilot.

Page writes that the military need for such an aircraft may be marginal, but the Excalibur, as now described, may well have many of the attributes of a flying car: Vertical takeoff, range, and largely hands-off autopiloting. If it were quiet enough, it could be a Jetsons-style aerial ride — though apparently single-seat only.

There are issues to be addressed, though. Apparently the full-size, man-lifter Excalibur would be 21 feet wide and 23 feet long, which is rather large for a flying bike. For now, Page says, Aurora hopes to build a smaller trial version to fly by the end of the year. If that goes well, the company will try to sell the larger full size version to the Army.