Rotorcraft
Experimental unmanned canard rotor-wing flies
Boeing’s Phantom Works has sent its canard rotor-wing (CRW) prototype aloft for flight test.

Boeing’s Phantom Works has sent its canard rotor-wing (CRW) prototype aloft for flight test. The unmanned 80-second flight, controlled by former USAF special operations pilot Stetson Cowan, took place at the company’s Yuma, Ariz. test facility on December 3 and is reported to have gone well.

The program manager for the X-50A Dragonfly CRW, Clark Mitchell, told AIN that flights will continue from now until around midyear, by which time he hopes that the aircraft will achieve a full conversion from rotary- to fixed-wing flight and back. “As an R&D project we are event driven–our goal is to make a conversion to fixed-wing flight and lock the rotor in place.”

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