WSJ:- Drone Project Lacks Pentagon Orders Needed to Stay Aloft
By ANDY PASZTOR
A Virginia contractor is waging a difficult campaign to provide the Pentagon a different type of surveillance drone, featuring propellers on the wings and unmatched endurance.
Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., of Manassas, Va., has spent five years working on the lumbering Orion—with two engines producing a normal cruising speed below 90 miles an hour—and last year the drone won the world flight-endurance record for an unmanned aircraft by staying aloft for 80 hours.
A 132-foot wingspan and lightweight construction mean Orion, developed with 50% Pentagon funding, can fly more than 1,500 miles, spend nearly three days circling over a designated area, and still have enough fuel to return to base.
But so far, neither that pedigree nor an increasingly public marketing campaign by the financially strapped company has overcome skepticism from military brass favoring larger contractors building much faster drones. At this point, Orion hasn’t snared any orders from the military, and its builder is scrambling to line up foreign customers and private financing to avoid shuttering the entire program. The closely held company said it has spent a total of $60 million on Orion and another aircraft, which it also is marketing to the Pentagon.
While Aurora said production costs for Orion and some other widely used Pentagon drones are comparable, industry and military experts generally view those rival models as more flexible, designed to carry a larger payload, able to react quickly to changing conditions on the ground and often intended to carry missiles—a role Orion was never envisioned to perform.
