Aurora Flight Sciences is small compared with most other UAV makers, and part of the reason has to do with timing, Chief Executive John Langford said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, "the people who had UAVs out there that could be grabbed and sent into theater have done very, very well. That's driven a lot of the growth" in the UAV market, he said. "Aurora did not have a product ready to go on 9/11, and we definitely missed that."
But, he added, "It's a long game … and I think you've got to be careful not to judge it too soon."
With the unconventional aircraft that Aurora is developing, such as its vertical-takeoff-and-landing Excalibur and GoldenEye, Langford envisions a future in which UAVs look less like miniature airplanes and more like systems designed without the human passenger in mind.
Today's UAVs "are very simple airplanes," said Langford, who also is the company's president and chairman. "All you have to do is look at some stuff like Excalibur or the GoldenEye, which doesn't look anything like a normal airplane, to realize that the design potential you get when you take the human out of the airplane. ... It completely changes the design space that you're dealing with. And that's where Aurora's focused, where I think most of the growth in the future's going to be."
Langford started the company in 1989 with two friends and a rented office. A private donation and a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the U.S. federal government kept Aurora going through what was often a risky market, before UAVs became mainstream with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Aurora gradually has been taking on more aerostructures work, allowing the company to continue deve-loping its other novel ideas, such as the Odysseus concept. Conceived under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Vulture program, the Z-shaped, solar-powered Odysseus is a high-altitude aircraft designed to meet the program's goal of staying aloft for up to five years.
The aerostructures business is the largest of Aurora's four sectors. Its operations include producing tail sections and composite fuselage parts for Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk high-altitude, long range UAV, and engine nacelles and fuselage sections for Sikorsky's new CH-53K heavy-lift cargo helicopter.
Research and development, advanced concepts (rapid prototyping) and tactical systems (including the Excalibur and GoldenEye) are the three other sectors. Aurora has two production facilities (in Clarksburg, W.Va., and Columbus, Miss.), a research and development center in Cambridge, Mass., and an engineering center at its headquarters in Manassas, Va., a suburb of Washington.
Aurora had nearly $100 million in revenue last year; as a private company, it does not release exact figures. But Langford said he sees Aurora graduating from projects funded by small business grants and growing perhaps to a $1 billion company in the next five to 10 years.
The GoldenEye, a vertical-takeoff-and-landing UAV powered by a ducted fan, is the company's big focus, Langford said. Aurora is developing the UAV to be able to take off from a moving truck, ship or other platform.
A turning point for the company could come in the next few years. Recently, Aurora demonstrated the vertical takeoff and landing of a "proof-of-principle" Excalibur that is half the size of the planned aircraft, which would have a 21-foot wing-span. Aurora has yet to demonstrate the UAV's forward flight.
If Aurora missed the boat after Sept. 11, the demand for UAVs is so great that there's still a big opportunity for the company to expand, said Michael Lewis, a defense analyst for BB&T Capital Markets. Its vertical-takeoff-and-landing technology is especially promising given the need for UAVs in challenging settings, Lewis said.
"In the next 10 to 15 years, vertical-takeoff-and-landing capabilities will offset the current platforms in use because they're easier to get in and out of tough terrain areas, and that includes urban terrain areas as well," he said.
But whether Aurora can grab that opportunity will depend on whether it can win a big defense contract for a program of record.
"Aurora has a strong opportunity to move into the ranks of some of the larger UAS [unmanned aerial system] providers, but it is absolutely contingent upon the [Pentagon] stepping in and providing a platform and investment into their system," Lewis said.
That investment would have to be on the order of $1 billion or more over several years, he said.
Excalibur is one of the company's most promising technologies, Lewis said. The UAV uses a turbine engine much like the Osprey tilt-rotor transport aircraft flown by the U.S. military, as well as electric lift fans and a jet-fueled hybrid electric engine for propulsion.
If the Excalibur is acquired by the U.S. Defense Department - and it would be years from now before it's fielded - it would fill a capability gap between the unweaponized Shadow UAV that troops bring with them to the battlefield and the weaponized Predator that can be miles away from troops when it's needed, Lewis said. The Excalibur is intended to carry weapons such as the Hellfire missile and other small precision-guided munitions.
Langford worked on a stealth fighter jet project at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works before starting up Aurora Flight Sciences.
He wanted to find "a way to be part of a smaller entrepreneurial group, where you could see the whole life cycle of an idea," he said. "Where in aerospace could you do that? Well, robotic airplanes."
Langford acknowledged that small companies with promising technologies often make attractive acquisition targets. But being acquired is not in the company's plans, he said. Rather, something akin to AeroVironment, a California high-tech UAV maker, becoming a public company is more attractive.
"People say to me, 'Hey, Aurora hasn't been as successful as [Boeing subsidiary] Insitu or AeroVironment,' and I say, come back in 10 years and we'll talk again." ■
E-mail: aboessenkool@defensenews.com.
The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is ready to test a few components that soldiers may have in their hands by 2010.
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