California’s Yates Electrospace Corp. said on Dec. 18 that the Department of the Air Force’s AFWERX innovation arm has awarded the company a small business innovation research contract for the company’s planned Silent Arrow Contested Logistics System-300 (CLS-300) “to address one of the most pressing challenges in the Department of the Air Force.”
“The CLS-300 is based on the commercially successful Silent Arrow GD-2000, the world’s first heavy payload, autonomous and attritable cargo delivery aircraft designed to carry 1,500 pounds of cargo over 35 nautical miles when deployed from cargo aircraft,” including the Lockheed Martin [LMT] C-130, Boeing [BA] C-17 and Airbus A400M, Yates said.
“Whereas the GD-2000 is a glider, the new CLS-300 can travel nearly 10 times as far by utilizing an innovative propulsion unit and propeller system that are inexpensive enough to allow the entire cargo drone to be attritable,” the company said. “In addition to being air droppable, it will also be capable of taking off from the ground including from unimproved surfaces, naval vessels and other launch points.”
Chip Yates, the company’s CEO and an electrical vehicle inventor, said in a Dec. 18 statement that CLS-300 propulsion tests will take place in the first half of next year, followed by flight tests in the second half, “so that we may rapidly deliver this critical capability to warfighters operating in harm’s way as well as to humanitarian and disaster relief organizations serving those in need.”
Yates has said that the company has received work from Air Force Special Operations Command, including the deployment of Silent Arrows from MC-130s.