Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has chosen Aurora Flight Sciences for the Manufacturing Technologies for the Remotely Piloted Vehicles (MaTeR) project. For the coming seven years Aurora will enable the development and improvement of production methods of all facets of the remotely piloted aircraft/vehicles (RPA/RPA) inclusive of both ground and air-borne components.
The primary work of Aurora will concentrate on cost-effective propulsion systems and airframe manufacturing technology. The team from Aurora includes Honeywell Aerospace, Rolls Royce North America, Textron, Goodrich Corporation, United Technologies and Williams International
Javier deLuis heading Aurora’s Research and Development Center stated that novel production methods are presently being experimented in laboratories and will completely transform the future of the remotely piloted aircraft. The application of these techniques to the present and upcoming military projects will significantly minimize the design cost of the future vehicles and the expenditure involved in retaining the existing vehicles. Since the expenses, complications and production time involved in designing new platforms is high and obscures the ability to sustain them it is important to concentrate on novel and affordable technologies.
The main objective of the MaTeR program is to showcase the major production technologies in the sectors of power, electronics, propulsion, simulation and modeling and advanced structures that will have a considerable effect on cost-efficiency, operational availability and development schedules of Air Force RPA.
Source: http://www.aurora.aero