An air-launched, self-recovering autonomous vehicle concept

The paper introduces an autonomous vehicle concept (ALSR AV) that is air-launched and self-recovering. The aircraft has a rotor wing lifting surface that is fixed perpendicular to the fuselage during flight operations, windmills during autorotative self-recovery, and is stowed parallel to the fuselage for transport. The vehicle has advantages over other proposed autonomous aircraft in that fuel requirements are minimized since it is transported to the objective area, separate launch and recovery facilities are not necessary, and it has a relatively compact size and low complexity relative to other V/STOL autonomous vehicles. The ALSR AV is proposed for remote sensing, surveillance, and scout military missions, as well as search-and-rescue and law-enforcement civil operations. The analysis indicates that the ALSR AV represents a viable candidate for such applications, and can be sized to be carried by and perform a mission complimentary to the AH-64 Apache.