Sikorsky Is Making A Most Extraordinary Commitment To R&D

An ebullient Sikorsky Boss, Jeffrey Pino, talked up the future of Sikorsky with all the pride and enthusiasm of a new Father. Pino noted that the company could be positioned to become the world's biggest helicopter company in the not-too-distant future, while also reporting that 2009 was a strong year for Sikorsky, which showed over $6.3 billion in turnover for the year... $1.1 billion of that in its commercial helicopter business.

"If you look at how our competitors calculate their backlogs, we have some $12 billion of business,'" said Pino. "In the next few years we could be the biggest helicopter company on the planet."

One of the reasons for his optimism was the prescient decision-making that led him to recreate Sikorsky via a number of dedicated company organizations... one of them pretty much entirely devoted to the development of new technologies... properly named "Sikorsky Innovations."

The mission of Sikorsky Innovations is to develop and mature the technologies, products and processes that will redefine the future of vertical flight.

The organization builds on Sikorsky's nearly 90 years of innovation and will increase the scope of previous efforts by expanding collaborative arrangements spanning government technology agencies, academic institutions, other UTC facilities and entrepreneurial businesses where research and product development will take place in cooperation with Sikorsky's engineers and technicians. Projects are currently under way at more than 20 locations nationwide.

Among those promising technologies is their work on "optionally Piloted vehicles." Aircraft that can not only be flown unmanned but which carry the option of either flying, manned, minimally crewed or unmanned... all via a control system that can adapt to the mission requirements at hand. Talk about 'having it your way...'

Another exciting offering is Sikorsky's work on 'Adaptive Rotor Technology,' currently boosted along by a major development contract with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

"Adaptive rotor technologies have the potential to vastly improve performance, and reduce vibration and noise," said Mark Miller, Vice President of Research and Engineering, at Heli-Expo 2010. "With this DARPA contract, Sikorsky Innovations will tackle the challenge of making the helicopter smarter. We are developing the next generation helicopter - an intelligent and adaptive helicopter that can become aware of its surroundings, identify the proximity of a threat, adjust in brownout situations, and respond appropriately."

FMI: www.sikorsky.com, www.aero-tv.net, www.youtube.com/aerotvnetwork, http://twitter.com/AeroNews