NextGen to build morphing UAV

NextGen Aeronautics is to build a small unmanned air vehicle able to change shape in flight under the next phase of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) morphing aircraft structures programme. The 90kg (200lb) autonomous vehicle will demonstrate NextGen’s morphing wing in flight. Award of a contract for Phase 3 of the DARPA technology demonstration follows “enormously successful” windtunnel tests of a full-scale model of NextGen’s wing, says president Jay Kudva. The wing, which has an articulating lattice structure covered with a stretchable reinforced skin, was tested at speeds up to Mach 0.92 and “very high” dynamic pressures. The model demonstrated morphing from 15° to 45° sweep – wing chord and area changing by a factor of almost two – in just 10s, he says.