Overview
- Sikorsky announced at the Farnborough Airshow on July 22 that initial ground checks and first flight evaluations of the Nomad 100 under DARPA’s EVADE program are complete.
- The Nomad 100 uses a rotor‑blown‑wing design in which twin proprotors lift the aircraft vertically then blow over a fixed wing so it can transition to faster, more efficient wing‑borne cruise without a runway.
- DARPA selected Sikorsky’s MATRIX as the common autonomy package for all five EVADE platforms and Sikorsky says MATRIX has logged more than 1,000 flight hours and over 500 tests and demonstrations.
- Sikorsky will place the Nomad 100 into an intensive, government‑run flight test campaign to assess missions from ship decks to forward operating bases, but the specific test site and timeline have not been disclosed.
- Sikorsky positions the 330 lb Group 3 Nomad 100 as the smallest in a scalable family that could replace legacy systems like the RQ‑7 Shadow and grow into larger logistics and reconnaissance variants to expand crewed‑uncrewed teaming.