Project Proteus Naval Helicopter UAV

[Hood]

The Ministry of Defence has awarded a £60 million contract to Leonardo to design and develop a 3-tonne helicopter UAV demonstrator. One of trials will be to drop sonobouys from the UAV. First flight is due in 2025.

£60 million to develop uncrewed helicopter for Royal Navy | Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is moving a step closer to operating crewless helicopters. The Ministry of Defence has awarded a £60 million contract to Leonardo to design and develop a cutting-edge uncrewed helicopter.

www.royalnavy.mod.uk

 

[H_K]

They claim that this will be a new clean sheet design, rather than a conversion of an existing manned helicopter, but I find that hard to believe…

Presumably the drive train (engines, gearbox & rotors) could all come from an existing AW design? Either the AW-09 (2.6t) or the AW-119 (2.8t) would seem like a good fit.

 

[TomcatViP]

If it's unmanned and military, they can push the new technologies beyond what the industry can do today: EV, turbogenerators, tilt wing or rotors* etc...
3t GTOW leaves you plenty of margins.

*a high speed will allow the system to be quickly on station without having to match the loiter capacity of the search platforms.

 

[H_K]

Thanks @TomcatViP. I would love to see something very innovative but that seems unlikely given the (relatively) small budget. Plus I’ve always read that tiltrotors don’t scale down well below a fairly large minimum size… so
that’s why I would expect them to reuse at least the drivetrain from an existing conventional rotary design.

 

[yasotay]

There is a lot of hovering associated with many of the naval missions. I think that the priority of the missions will dictate the propulsion means. What size ship do they expect this air vehicle to operate from? That too will dictate potential propulsive means and weights. I, like @H_K, would love to see some great innovation, but given they want to demo in two years I think that very challenging for a clean sheet design.