The Vanilla UAV is a long-endurance, low-cost

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

(UAV) produced by American manufacturer Vanilla Unmanned. It has flown unrefueled over 8 days.

Development

Vanilla Unmanned was founded by

aerostructure An aerostructure is a component of an aircraft's airframe. This may include all or part of the fuselage, wings, or flight control surfaces. Companies that specialize in constructing these components are referred to as "aerostructures manufacturer ...

s designer Daniel Hatfield,

systems A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is exp ...

engineer Neil Boertlein, and program manager Jeremy Novara. This team designed, built, and flew the VA001 prototype. In October 2020, Vanilla Unmanned was acquired by Platform Aerospace, a provider of aircraft prototyping, modification, and systems integration. In December 2016, a VA001 set an

Fédération Aéronautique Internationale The World Air Sports Federation (; FAI) is the world governing body for air sports, and also stewards definitions regarding human spaceflight. It was founded on 14 October 1905, and is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. It maintains worl ...

(FAI) world record endurance of 2 days, 7 hours, 56 minutes in Las Cruses

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

. In October 2017, a VA001 completed a flight of 5-days, 1-hour, 20-minutes at NASA Wallops in Virginia, covering 7,000 miles (11,265 km) and landing with three days of fuel remaining. On 2 October 2021, a Vanilla UAV completed an 8 day, 50 minute flight from

Edwards AFB Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force installation in California. Most of the base sits in Kern County, but its eastern end is in San Bernardino County and a southern arm is in Los Angeles County. The hub of the base is Edwa ...

in California, flying 10,600 nmi (19,600 km) in circuits, an internal combustion engine-powered UAV record ratified by the FAI. Only the

Rutan Voyager The Rutan Model 76 Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. It was piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base's 15,000 foot (4,600 m) runway in the Moja ...

has flown longer unrefueled (see

flight endurance record The flight endurance record is the longest amount of time an aircraft of a particular category spent in flight without landing. It can be a solo event, or multiple people can take turns piloting the aircraft, as long as all pilots remain in the ai ...

s). In November 2021,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

flew the Vanilla UAV in the

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

from

Deadhorse Airport Deadhorse Airport is a public airport located in Deadhorse on the North Slope of Alaska. It can be accessed from Fairbanks via the Elliott and Dalton highways. It is near Prudhoe Bay and is sometimes also called Prudhoe Airport. Facilit ...

, Alaska, testing instruments to survey the region, monitoring

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

change, as it could fly for nearly five days over

sea ice Sea ice arises as seawater freezes. Because ice is less density, dense than water, it floats on the ocean's surface (as does fresh water ice). Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth's surface and about 12% of the world's oceans. Much of the world' ...

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

, and

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

ice sheets. It carried a

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

to measure the depth of snow on top of the sea ice, and ice-detecting sensors, heating systems, and a special anti-icing coating to manage flight in the cold temperatures.

Design

The initial VA001 was powered by a off-the-shelf engine driving a

pusher propeller In aeronautical and naval engineering, pusher configuration is the term used to describe a drivetrain of air- or watercraft with propulsion device(s) after the engine(s). This is in contrast to the more conventional tractor configuration, whic ...

, and was controlled by a Piccolo

autopilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of a vehicle without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allow ...

. Weighing up to 600 lb (272 kg), it has a 36 ft (11 m) wing span and a 55-gallon (208-litre) fuel capacity. It has a projected

endurance Endurance (also related to sufferance, forbearance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, persistence, tenacity, steadfastness, perseverance, stamina, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a ...

of up to 10 days at 55 kn (102 km/h) and up to , and burning of jet fuel per hour. The VA001 was launched using a

sled A sled, skid, sledge, or sleigh is a land vehicle that slides across a surface, usually of ice or snow. It is built with either a smooth underside or a separate body supported by two or more smooth, relatively narrow, longitudinal runners ...

and pulled by a towline attached to a

pickup truck A pickup truck or pickup is a Truck_classification#Table_of_US_GVWR_classifications, light or medium duty truck that has an enclosed cabin (truck), cabin, and a back end made up of a cargo bed that is enclosed by three low walls with no roof (th ...

. It lands at on a single center wheel. VA001 could carry a payload for 10 days. Mission payload options include:

electro-optical Electro–optics is a branch of electrical engineering, electronic engineering, materials science, and material physics involving components, electronic devices such as lasers, laser diodes, LEDs, waveguides, etc. which operate by the propaga ...

and

synthetic aperture radar Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that is used to create two-dimensional images or 3D reconstruction, three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR uses the motion of the radar antenna over a target regi ...

sensors for

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing, or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as ...

including

maritime surveillance Maritime patrol or maritime reconnaissance is the task of monitoring areas of water. Generally conducted by military and law enforcement agencies, maritime patrol is usually aimed at identifying human activities. Maritime patrol refers to active ...

, or acting as a

radio relay Radio stations that cannot communicate directly due to distance, terrain or other difficulties sometimes use an intermediate radio relay station to relay the signals. A radio relay receives weak signals and retransmits them, often in a different di ...

. Platform Aerospace increased Vanilla's takeoff weight by . It can now carry maximum of of payload, or fly over with a payload.

Specifications (VA001 / Vanilla UAV)

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://vanillaunmanned.com/ Unmanned aerial vehicles of the United States Unmanned aerial vehicles