In early 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense announced an open competition to create a "flying Humvee" - a vehicle for four fighters, with vertical takeoff and landing, which can also ride on land - both on the highway and off-road.
On July 12, Fort Worth, Texas-based AVX Aircraft unveiled their design - a vehicle with two large coaxial propellers and a pair of tunnel propellers on the sides. The large propellers of the product fold down on the ground, making it very compact; the transformation from helicopter to buggy (or vice versa) takes just a minute.
The performance characteristics of the AVX Aircraft are as follows: payload - 472 kg, cruising range - 402 km, maximum speed on the ground - 129 km / h, in the air - 225 km / h, ceiling - 3 km.
AVX is the second entrant in the new DARPA competition. The first was Logi Aerospace, which offered a carbon fiber product called Tyrannos with four tunnel propellers (three of them change position to switch from vertical takeoff to horizontal flight), folding wings, a payload of 500 kg (817 kg at horizontal takeoff), a power reserve of 463 km, a maximum speed of 93 km / h on the ground and 250 km / h in the air, a ceiling of 3 km. It is noteworthy that Tyrannos, unlike the AVR project, is designed to control fighters who do not have pilot qualifications: takeoff and landing can be carried out on autopilot!
We are not military experts, but the most feasible use of "flying Humvees" seems to us to be the suppression of unrest in large cities; inevitably, weak armor will make the machines extremely vulnerable during takeoff, landing and flights at low altitudes when fighting insurgents armed with something heavier than pistols and machine guns.
Despite the fact that the Logi Aerospace car is heavier and obviously more expensive, it has greater propaganda and cinematic potential - thanks to the possibility of a heroic horizontal takeoff with excess weight along a miraculously survived piece of overpass (only 54 meters of flat surface is needed), the presence of a miracle autopilot (which can be used by hero of the people), the possibility of short-term exceeding the maximum speed both in the air and on the ground.
