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.

▲

amluto 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲

dzhiurgis 8 hours ago | parent [-]

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).

▲

amluto 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.)

	▲	dzhiurgis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> ships That's a tangent from most sensitive vehicle to weight to the _least_ sensitive one.

▲

nradov 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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...

	▲	dzhiurgis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		How is it going to reduce fuel consumption by nearly doubling the weight?

▲

AngryData 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲

dzhiurgis 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can we settle in the middle and trial them for cargo first? Seems obvious for deliveries.

▲

8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.

▲

dzhiurgis 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh market is def there. I mean validating technology on cargo.

	▲	JumpCrisscross an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> validating technology on cargo The tradeoff is you have to build a cargo business. That costs money and leadership attention. Racing for the beachhead, given sufficient access to capital, is the more focused strategy. (This is a good example of how bootstrapped versus financed companies can be radically different in their technical debts, time to market, culture and discipline around validating hypotheses.)

▲

booleandilemma 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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?

▲

nradov 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲

walrus01 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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...

	▲	booleandilemma 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I see. Thanks for both your answers.

▲

walrus01 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	nradov 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.