Jamie Bennet
Blue Force Technologies has completed a propulsion flowpath test for the Fury unmanned aircraft vehicle it is developing under an Air Force Research Laboratory program.
Both organizations have collaborated for almost six months to conduct the ground engine test as part of AFRL’s Bandit initiative, which seeks a novel aircraft to support adversary air training missions, The North Carolina-based aerospace and defense company said Wednesday.
The test aimed to validate a previously conducted computational fluid dynamics analysis for autonomous collaborative platforms used by the armed forces. The team employed digital engineering and analytics to provide high-fidelity data to the UAV.
“On an uncrewed fighter like Fury, proper integration of the propulsion flowpath is the most significant design driver for the overall vehicle,” Blue Force President Scott Bledsoe explained. “It was crucial to us to demonstrate, prior to building flight test aircraft, that we could correctly predict the interaction between the propulsion flowpath components and the Williams International engine.”
In March 2022, BFT was awarded a one-year, Small Business Innovation Research contract for the design maturation of its high-performance drone.
