New ‘Nomad’ VTOL Drone Family Could Boost Air Force’s Plans for Agile Ops

Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky subsidiary is introducing a new “Nomad” family of autonomous uncrewed aerial systems that needs no runways and could be applied to missions complementing the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment model, including resupply, armed combat, and potentially, combat search and rescue, company officials said Oct. 6.

The “family of systems” ranges all the way from a small, 10-foot-wingspan vehicle to one with a wingspan of about 55 feet. The aircraft are payload agnostic: able to launch weapons, carry cargo, conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and possibly extract downed aircrew, according to Erskine “Ramsey” Bentley, Sikorsky’s director of strategy and business development. The technology is “scalable” to the needs of the user, he said.

The key is its “rotor blown wing” technology, Bentley said, which increases the vehicle’s lift by blowing propeller air over the wing and allowing it to “very quickly transition” to a level and efficient attitude after vertical takeoff. The rotor blades are articulated to enhance efficiency in all flight regimes.

Sikorsky announced it had completed an extended flight test of the “Nomad 50,” with a 10.3-foot wingspan, in March. The Nomad 100, with an 18-foot wingspan, is now in fabrication and should fly in the next few months.

The Air Force is becoming increasingly interested in “runway independent” uncrewed aerial vehicles, Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, head of Air Force futures, said at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies earlier this year.

Under the ACE concept, the Air Force plans to disperse its forces in small teams across many locations in a future conflict, moving them frequently to complicate targeting for an adversary employing lots of long-range, precision-guided missiles. The ability to fly aircraft without the need for a runway would vastly increase the number of potential operating sites and impose greater costs on an adversary, Kunkel said.

Nomad is the latest in a series of autonomous or unmanned aerial vehicles proposed by companies to help make the logistics of ACE work.

What separates it is its vertical takeoff and landing capabilities and scalable sizes.

The larger versions of Nomad achieve “10-plus hours of endurance and 1,000 miles” of range, Bentley said, allowing it to self-deploy to wherever a user needs it. The vehicle can be operated by two ground crew using only a tablet but can also perform its mission without direction, using the company’s “Matrix autonomous technology,” which has been used with both fixed and rotary wing aircraft, he said.

He also said the goal is a system that can operate “without much sustainment” in the field.

“When you think about an Air Force employment at the squadron level … you may be looking for something smaller, like a Group 3 [drone] that’s more tactical in nature,” Bentley said, referring to the different classifications the military uses to describe drones. “But when you’re thinking about employment at the wing level … then you may be looking at a larger, Group 4 [vehicle] with more capability.”

Smaller versions could carry ammunition, supplies, or blood to battle locations, but the largest version “has the payload to carry multiple large-sized anti-aircraft or anti-ship missiles,” Bentley said.

The vehicle could be particularly intriguing for the combat search and rescue mission, where the Air Force is looking at a range of concepts to both reduce the risk to aircrews and be effective in a large theater like the Pacific.

Nomad could either deliver supplies to a downed crewman waiting for evacuation or, in its largest iteration, carry a travel pod that could carry a person, Bentley said.

For now, Nomad is “focused “ on UAS Group 3 and 4, Bentley said. But Sikorsky uses the term “family” of systems “to point to a key attribute of the design: its ability to be scaled in size from a small Group 3 UAS to the footprint equivalent of a Black Hawk helicopter,” company vice president and general manager Rich Benton said.

As such, Sikorsky isn’t just pitching Nomad for the Air Force. The drone runs on heavy fuel, like the Army uses on its General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, and Sikorsky will display Nomad at next week’s Association of the U.S. Army conference and technology expo. Company officials say the Nomad could complement the Army’s Black Hawk helicopter or Navy’s Sea Hawk chopper in a variety of missions and operate from a ship, performing maritime patrol or strike missions.

The twin-proprotor design of the Nomad series “combines the versatility of a helicopter with the speed and range of a fixed-wing airplane,” according to a Sikorsky press release. Nomad will be able to “take off, hover, and land vertically, plus cruise on the wing for extended periods.” While smaller Nomad variants will use a hybrid electric drivetrain, the larger versions will use “a conventional drivetrain.”

Bentley said Sikorsky has responded to “multiple requests for information [with] … different vehicles” from the U.S. services. “We’re thinking both DOD and civilian customers looking for an austere landing capability, or austere operational capability with a very small operational footprint,” he said. Though there is a “multitude” of customers interested in the technology, Bentley said he was not at liberty to name them.

Nomad is the result of Sikorsky’s work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s “VTOL-X” program, which has been underway for several years, Bentley said. Sikorsky has invested independent research and development funds in the concept as well.

The price of the various aircraft in the family has not been set, but Bentley said it would be “commensurate” with other aircraft in similar UAS classes.

Fabrication of the Group 3 version is underway, but Sikorsky will wait on “a little more definitive requirement from potential customers” before starting to fabricate the larger Class 4 version. If one of the services decides it wants that largest version, Bentley said Sikorsky could complete development and get production underway by fiscal 2030.

Bentley said the platform is intended for foreign as well as U.S. customers. Civil applications, such as aerial firefighting, have been demonstrated and are also likely, he said.