The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created on February 7, 1958, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957. By collaborating with academia, industry, and government partners, DARPA formulates and executes research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, often beyond immediate U.S. military requirements. The name of the organization first changed from its founding name, ARPA, to DARPA, in March 1972, changing back to ARPA in February 1993, then reverted to DARPA in March 1996.
Saudia, formerly known as Saudi Arabian Airlines, is the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, based in Jeddah. The airline's main hubs are the King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah and the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, the latter of which it plans to move out of by 2030.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules is a prototype strategic airlift flying boat designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft Company. Intended as a transatlantic flight transport for use during World War II, it was not completed in time to be used in the war. The aircraft made only one brief flight, on November 2, 1947, and the project never advanced beyond the prototype.
The Boeing 314 Clipper was an American long-range flying boat produced by Boeing from 1938 to 1941. One of the largest aircraft of its time, it had the range to cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. For its wing, Boeing re-used the design from the earlier XB-15 bomber prototype. Twelve Clippers were built, nine of which served with Pan Am. It was the first aircraft to carry a sitting American president, when in 1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt flew from Miami to the Casablanca Conference in Morocco, via Trinidad, Brazil, and The Gambia.
The Boeing X-32 is a concept demonstrator aircraft that was designed for the Joint Strike Fighter competition. It lost to the Lockheed Martin X-35 demonstrator, which was further developed into the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.
The Lun-class ekranoplan is the only ground effect vehicle (GEV) to ever be operationally deployed as a warship, deploying in the Caspian Flotilla. It was designed by Rostislav Alexeyev in 1975 and used by the Soviet and later Russian navies from 1987 until sometime in the late 1990s.
SpiceJet is an Indian low-cost airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana. As of June 2024, it is the sixth largest airline in India by number of domestic passengers carried, with a market share of 4% and connects 73 destinations, including 60 Indian and 13 international from its bases at Delhi and Hyderabad.
The Boeing Pelican ULTRA was a proposed ground effect fixed-wing aircraft under study by Boeing Phantom Works in the early 2000s.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is a military contractor and subsidiary of General Atomics that designs and manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles and radar systems for the U.S. military and commercial applications worldwide.
The Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion is a heavy transport helicopter designed and produced by Sikorsky Aircraft. The King Stallion is an evolution of the long running CH-53 series of helicopters which has been in continuous service since 1966, and features three up-rated 7,500 shp (5,590 kW) engines, new composite rotor blades, and a wider aircraft cabin than its predecessors. It is the largest and heaviest helicopter in the U.S. military.
The Bell Boeing Quad TiltRotor (QTR) is a proposed four-rotor derivative of the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey developed jointly by Bell Helicopter and Boeing. The concept is a contender in the U.S. Army's Joint Heavy Lift program. It would have a cargo capacity roughly equivalent to the C-130 Hercules, cruise at 250 knots, and land at unimproved sites vertically like a helicopter.
A ground-effect vehicle (GEV), also called a wing-in-ground-effect (WIG), ground-effect craft, wingship, flarecraft or ekranoplan, is a vehicle that is able to move over the surface by gaining support from the reactions of the air against the surface of the earth or water. Typically, it is designed to glide over a level surface by making use of ground effect, the aerodynamic interaction between the moving wing and the surface below. Some models can operate over any flat area such as frozen lakes or flat plains similar to a hovercraft.
Aurora Flight Sciences (AFS) is an American aviation and aeronautics research subsidiary of Boeing that specializes in special-purpose unmanned aerial vehicles. Aurora's headquarters is at Manassas Regional Airport.
Air India is the flag carrier airline of India. It is owned by Air India Limited, a Tata Group enterprise and operates a fleet of Airbus and Boeing aircraft serving 102 domestic and international destinations. It is headquartered in Gurugram. The airline has its main hub at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, and secondary hubs at Kempegowda International Airport in Bangalore and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, alongside several focus cities across India. As of July 2023, the airline is the second-largest airline in India in terms of passengers carried, after IndiGo. Air India became the 27th member of Star Alliance on 11 July 2014.
The Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System (ARES) was a concept for an unmanned VTOL flight module that can transport various payloads. The concept started as the TX (Transformer) in 2009 for a terrain-independent transportation system centered on a ground vehicle that could be configured into a VTOL air vehicle and carry four troops. ARES' primary function was the same as TX, to use flight to avoid ground-based transportation threats like ambushes and IEDs for units that don't have helicopters for those missions. It was to be powered by twin tilting ducted fans and have its own power system, fuel, digital flight controls, and remote command-and-control interfaces. The flight module would have different detachable mission modules for specific purposes including cargo delivery, CASEVAC, and ISR. Up to 3,000 lb (1,400 kg) of payload would be carried by a module.
The DARPA XS-1 was an experimental spaceplane/booster with the planned capability to deliver small satellites into orbit for the U.S. Military. It was reported to be designed to be reusable as frequently as once a day, with a stated goal of doing so for 10 days straight. The XS-1 was intended to directly replace the first stage of a multistage rocket by taking off vertically and flying to hypersonic speed and high suborbital altitude, enabling one or more expendable upper stages to separate and deploy a payload into low Earth orbit. The XS-1 would then return to Earth, where it could ostensibly be serviced fast enough to repeat the process at least once every 24 hours.
The Vertical Take-Off and Landing Experimental Aircraft program was an American research project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The goal of the program was to demonstrate a VTOL aircraft design that can take off vertically and efficiently hover, while flying faster than conventional rotorcraft. There have been many previous attempts, most of them unsuccessful as of 2015.
The Aurora X-65 CRANE is an experimental aircraft that is currently under development. In charge are the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences.
