The Aurora Excalibur was an

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller ...

(UAV) developed by

Aurora Flight Sciences Aurora Flight Sciences is an American aviation and aeronautics research subsidiary of Boeing which primarily specializes in the design and construction of special-purpose Unmanned aerial vehicles. Aurora has been established for 20+ years and th ...

between 2005 and 2010 capable of vertical takeoff and landing (

VTOL A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust-vectoring fixed-win ...

). The design combined ducted fans and hybrid drive. A smaller scale model with a wingspan was successfully tested on June 24, 2009. A full-scale version was to be capable of carrying four

AGM-114 Hellfire The AGM-114 Hellfire is an air-to-ground missile (AGM) first developed for anti-armor use, later developed for precision drone strikes against other target types, especially high-value targets. It was originally developed under the name ''Heli ...

missiles and traveling at . Aurora used the experience of developing this vehicle to inform their submission to the Vertical Take-Off and Landing Experimental Aircraft ( VTOL X-Plane) programme funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

References

External links

Aurora Flight Sciences Excalibur page

Excalibur first flight video
Airborne military robots Unmanned aerial vehicles of the United States Aurora Flight Sciences aircraft {{UAV-stub