AUSA 2025 — Aerospace giant Boeing is in the “conceptual stages” of a new tiltrotor drone wingman, according to a company executive, who said the unmanned system could join platforms like US Army Apache attack helicopters or Chinook transport aircraft in battle.
“It’ll be a tiltrotor with two proprotors” and a gas turbine engine, Chris Speights, chief engineer of Boeing’s vertical lift portfolio for its defense division, said in a briefing with reporters on Oct. 7 ahead of the AUSA conference in Washington. “We believe that that’s going to provide the most mature, rapid ability to field.”
The modular, unmanned wingman “is a conceptual design that’s being developed,” Speights said, adding that Boeing is seeking feedback from the Army. “But all of our analysis shows that this is absolutely meeting the needs” for a “family of systems” setup where various platforms are connected together and working in tandem.
The drone, dubbed CxR, is being designed to “carry the payloads that are relevant for Apache types of missions,” Speights said, whereas a potential variant, dubbed ClR, would provide logistics support for aircraft like the Chinook. The drone would be in the Group 4 or 5 category, the upper end of how the Pentagon describes sizes of drones. He deferred questions about its development timeline.
The Army in a shakeup of its aviation portfolio last year canceled a next-gen reconnaissance aircraft dubbed FARA, redirecting its dollars into unmanned systems, though officials did commit to continuing a futuristic assault aircraft dubbed the MV-75. Other military services like the Air Force and Navy are pursuing their own unmanned wingman, but with varying designs.
Estimating the drone’s max gross weight could be between 5,000 to 7,000 lbs, Speights said it would likely be capable of carrying payloads as heavy as 1,000 to 2,000 lbs. Boeing engineers are targeting a speed for the platform at somewhere between 200 to 250 knots, according to Speights, which he said would potentially enable it to be a wingman for the MV-75.
“We want to have technologies that are proven,” Speights said, pointing to the company’s experience with the troubled V-22 Osprey that is currently expected to fly with restrictions until next year. Specifically, Speights said Boeing learned important lessons concerning features like tiltrotor control mode transitions — essentially, what systems and flight controls are needed for an aircraft to take off like a helicopter and then shift its rotors in flight to fly like a plane.
“We really want to leverage and lean on that, because there’s a lot of maturity and capability there, and that’s what we see adding value to this collaborative requirement,” he said.
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