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Aurora Flight Sciences announced today that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded the company the prime contract for Phase 2 of the Agency’s Vertical Takeoff and Landing Experimental Plane (VTOL X-Plane) program. VTOL X-Plane seeks to develop a technology demonstrator that could: • Achieve a top sustained flight speed of 300 kt-400 kt • Raise aircraft hover efficiency from 60 percent to at least 75 percent • Present a more favorable cruise lift-to-drag ratio of at least 10, up from 5-6 • Carry a useful load of at least 40 percent of the vehicle’s projected gross weight of 10,000-12,000 pounds The Aurora team’s design for its unmanned aircraft, named LightningStrike, seeks to provide an approximately 50-percent increase in speed over existing VTOL aircraft designed for comparable mission applications. To view the multimedia release go to: http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7617851-aurora-flight-sciences-vtol-xplane-darpa/