California-based Mayman Aerospace announced on 26 September 2024 that it has completed successful flight tests at a military base in the Southern California desert of its Razor test-bed vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
The Razor test bed has exactly the same dimensions and weight as Mayman’s Razor P100 UAV concept and uses the same jet-powered propulsion, engine gimballing, thrust vectoring and flight control systems.
Supported by an Other Transaction Authority (OTA) contract with the US Department of Defence (DoD), the fully autonomous flight tests were designed to test avionics, thrust vectoring mechanisms, flight control laws, software, and command and control (C2) while also enabling early verification of operating procedures. This series of tests focused on the transition of the engines moving out of hover mode, which is critical for high-speed winged flight.
The Razor VTOL UAV, which Mayman refers to as an ‘air utility vehicle’ (AUV), is designed with multi-role capabilities. It can act as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, while its proprietary control system enables swift, secure and efficient transportation of critical supplies to support military readiness and resilience in challenging and austere environments. Razor aircraft can also be configured to extend the range of smaller air-to-air or air-to-surface missiles such as Brimstone or Hellfire, delivering them over 320 km. The aircraft can then deploy the missile for final target acquisition, enhancing the reach and precision of the missiles carried. The Razor UAV can thus provide a cost-effective alternative to more expensive cruise missiles, with its AI-guided command and control enabling precise payload delivery.
While the Razor UAV’s VTOL capability deployment and recovery from confined areas, the aircraft is expected to be able to achieve speed of up to 805 km/h.
“Our recent flight tests were 100% successful and we are confident Razor will reach speeds greater than 450 kts,” David Mayman, founder and CEO of Mayman Aerospace, was quoted as saying in a company press release. “As a multi-role, dual-use technology Razor is already changing the way defense commanders and civilian leaders are thinking about autonomous VTOL applications. We are a software-driven hardware company and our team is achieving performance levels once only dreamed about. We are super excited about the next set of flight tests later this year.
“At Mayman Aerospace we are pioneering the future of autonomous warfare with our cutting-edge high-speed VTOL aircraft,” Mayman continued. “We are integrating artificial intelligence within existing intelligence, surveillance, navigation, control, and strategic frameworks to develop autonomous systems that are cost effective, quick to manufacture, relatively expendable and can be deployed in sufficient numbers to meet future battlefield requirements. One of the first casualties of modern warfare will be airfields, and therefore VTOL aircraft will be critical to future conflict success.”
Dr Manu Sharma, chief engineer at Mayman Aerospace, added, “In these flight tests we flew seven autonomous mission sets and all systems worked perfectly as planned. The primary objective was to validate recent flight software and control-law updates, with particular attention to the change from hover mode with the engines canted outwards from the aircraft centre, to transition mode with all engines canted in the same direction, which is required to get us into winged flight. It is also a benefit to get additional autonomous flight time on the vehicle, take-off and landing in particular, to increase our confidence in the system as a whole.”
Mayman Aerospace has already designed, built and flight tested five full-scale prototypes and secured US DoD contracts. The Razor aircraft is fully scalable and the team plans to develop P100, P500 and P1000 variants featuring payload capabilities of 100 lb (45 kg), 500 lb (227 kg) and 1,000 lb (454 kg) respectively.
Manufacturing and sales of the P100 are scheduled to begin in 2025.
