Irvine-based Silent Arrow, one of a growing number of OC-based drone makers, has received a $750,000 U.S. Air Force contract to develop cargo delivery drones for military and humanitarian purposes, and the company is already looking to possible orders in the millions of dollars for the new line of gliders.
The gliders can be used to deliver practically anything from batteries to water, food and vaccines, and are meant to replace old-fashioned parachute drops, says Chief Executive Chip Yates.
Silent Arrow already makes the automatically guided GD2000 “Glider Disposable” that is launched from C-130 cargo transport planes and can deliver up to 1,500 pounds of cargo in specific locations.
“It’s a one-time use glider,” says Yates, the head of Yates Electrospace Corp., which was founded in 2012 and bills itself as a “founding pioneers of advanced electric aircraft.” The firm does business as Silent Arrow.
“As they come out, their wings spring open and their autopilot turns on and they turn away from the C-130 and they navigate by themselves to a landing zone. That’s to deliver military supplies, or humanitarian relief, or vaccines or whatever.”
The new contract calls for development of a slimmed-down, precision-guided “autonomous cargo delivery glider” that can handle 350 pounds of cargo, after the military said it was looking for a smaller model.
They will be able to be launched from military transport planes such as the C-130 using rear ramps and pallets that spread three or four gliders at a time “like a swarm” or out the side doors of other airplanes, for example, Yates said on Dec. 1.
“It’s an autonomous drone that’s a glider,” Yates said.
Glider Launches
The launch platforms will range from a civilian single-engine Cessna Caravan to the military’s C-17 transport behemoth with four jet engines, according to a Nov. 29 announcement.
The gliders make an “airplane-type landing.”
Yates says their relatively low cost and reliance on a standard autopilot and a laser altimeter make them easily “disposable.”
He said the Air Force contract lasts for 12 months, putting pressure on the company to develop the new glider and take through testing within a tight time frame.
“If that is successful, as we expect it will be, that leads to Phase 3 which can be $10 million, $20 million, $30 million” or more, according to Yates.
Manufacturing Facility
Yates is the company’s founder, CEO and majority shareholder, while the company’s investors include the Veterans Venture Capital of Knoxville, Tenn.
The Irvine aerospace company currently has 12 employees.
The company has set up a manufacturing facility in the U.K. “that can do thousands” and will have another manufacturing facility in Mississippi, both for the original larger model, according to Yates.
“Everybody knows that you shouldn’t set up a blue-collar manufacturing facility in Southern California.”
He says the company has programs in place with the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The current major customer for the GD-2000 larger version is a “major ally of the United States in the Middle East,” though Yates declined to provide the name.
Yates said no production planning has yet been made for the smaller model covered by the Air Force contract announced last month, pointing out the redesigned glider for “tactical” military operations and humanitarian use first must be developed and tested.
By way of example of the Air Force’s humanitarian work, the military branch helped the relief effort after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and after the 2011 earthquake off the coast of Japan that triggered a massive tsunami.
