Comment by nradov
12 hours ago
The venture money is betting that the e-VTOL technology can be weaponized. Small, disposable drones have been getting all the attention lately due to the war between Russia and Ukraine. But longer term there are a lot of potential missions for larger VTOL combat aircraft — both drones and crewed.
I would guess that a military version would be a hybrid: electric motors as in all the e-VTOL prototypes, enough battery power to comfortably take off, land and maneuver in combat conditions, and a small hydrocarbon-fueled engine to recharge the battery while cruising.
What problem would a hybrid solve for military? Military doesn't care about emissions and this doesn't offer resilience like fully electric does (recharge anywhere, reliability).
The same problem that a hybrid architecture solves for ships: the ability to use physically small electric motors with very high power density that are mechanically decoupled from the rest of the vehicle. This lets a bunch of designs pull off neat thrust vectoring tricky with much simpler and lighter components than a mechanical thrust vectoring system would need.
(Electric azimuth thrusters are becoming common in large ships for roughly this reason, too.)
1 reply →
The military cares a lot about range, signature reduction, and especially fuel efficiency. Reducing fuel usage reduces the logistical train necessary to sustain units in the field.
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2025/01/22/army-tries-out-n...
2 replies →
I don't see how these style of drone like aircraft could possibly be better for personnel or gear transport over a collective rotor helicopter. A bigger rotor is more efficient, can lift more, and can autorotate to a safe landing after taking the inevitable battle damage and losing power.
I mean I could be wrong, im certainly not an expert in future military design and strategy, but I just don't see any advantages once you start scaling these to the size needed to move humans. The only potential I can see is multi-rotor designs being easier to learn to pilot over a collective rotor design, but I don't see any modern military considering a few weeks off a pilot's training being worth the trade off in range, capacity, and safety.
Can we settle in the middle and trial them for cargo first? Seems obvious for deliveries.
> Can we settle in the middle and trial them for cargo first?
There is an existing market for passenger eVTOL to and from airports. Using that as a beachhead makes way more sense than trying to develop a de novo niche.
Oh market is def there. I mean validating technology on cargo.
1 reply →
Why are larger drones better than smaller suicide drones that can have bombs attached to them and built by the thousands per day in a dark factory?
Different configurations are better for different missions. Small suicide drones have very limited range, weak sensors, and can't carry much cargo or a large enough warhead to take out hardened targets. Hopefully we'll never get into a conflict with China, but if we do the platforms will have to be much larger just due to the greater ranges involved.
Range, for one, if what you're referring to as a mental model is 15" prop size quadcopters with an artillery shell strapped to them. For use <50km.
Now look at a photo of a human standing next to a shahed-136 size UAV for a totally different size scale.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/11/in-europe-the-p...
I see. Thanks for both your answers.
The 'final' decision was recently made to go ahead with the massive project for this, which is eventually intended to replace the UH60/Blackhawk type platform. Traditional big money defense contractor stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_MV-75_Cheyenne_II
The military operates more than one type of aircraft. I don't think an MV-75 will fit very well on an FF(X), for example.