Naomi Cooper
Leidos and Elroy Air have secured approval to demonstrate the latter’s Chaparral autonomous vertical take-off and landing aircraft for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Medium Aerial Resupply Vehicle – Expeditionary Logistics program.
The MARV-EL flight test activities will take place in July at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona, to demonstrate the ability of the VTOL aerial resupply drone to transport cargo and resupply forward-deployed ground forces, Leidos said Tuesday.
Chaparral is a hybrid-electric cargo delivery system capable of taking off and landing vertically with minimal support from launch and recovery infrastructure. It has an advanced carbon composite airframe and uses a modular design approach for integrating automated payload capabilities.
“We’ve been designing Chaparral from the beginning to move cargo and resupply troops in the battlespace without putting crews in harm’s way,” said Dave Merrill, co-founder and CEO of Elroy Air.
“Approval to proceed to test is a major milestone and is the result of months of hard work by the team. We look forward to demonstrating how the Leidos and Elroy Air MARV-EL solution will help deliver a logistics advantage to the Marines and other branches of the military,” said Tim Freeman, senior vice president and airborne systems business area manager at Leidos.
