DARPA working on aircraft that will stay in the sky for five years

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will soon award a contract for development of an unmanned aircraft that is capable of staying in the air for up to five years at a time.

DARPA’s project, called Vulture, aims to create a craft that can fly uninterrupted over an area for extended periods of time while performing intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and communication missions.

“We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft,” said Daniel Newman, manager of the Vulture program. “Aviation has a perfect record - we’ve never left one up there. We will attempt to break that record.”

There are many technological challenges ahead for the program, such as what to use to provide the energy for Vulture to operate. Fuel cells and solar power are the only viable options, both requiring a good deal of work to get up and running in a craft such as this. Vulture will also have to be able to carry a 1,000-pound payload and maintain sufficient speeds to withstand the winds at 60,000 to 90,000 feet.

An upside to the aircraft, though, is that it won’t need foreign bases to land on. It can simply fly there, stay for a few years, and fly back.

It’s exciting to think that a plane can stay in the air for such long periods of time. Imagine one of those hovering over your house for five years though… pretty creepy!