Aurora XV-24 LightningStrike

Lore & Background

On 3 March 2016, DARPA awarded Aurora Flight Sciences $89.4 million to build and demonstrate the LightningStrike concept, beating three other competitors. Phase II of the VTOL X-Plane project planned to fabricate two air vehicles before flight testing, scheduled by September 2018. A 20-percent-scale demonstrator weighing 325 lb (147 kg) and constructed with carbon composites and 3D-printed plastics was flown on 29 March 2016. The full-scale aircraft was designated the XV-24A.

The LightningStrike uses a tilting-wing design powered by a single Rolls-Royce AE1107C turboshaft engine—the same type used on the V-22 Osprey—which drives three Honeywell generators to produce three megawatts of electricity. This power runs 24 distributed ducted fans: three in each forward canard (21 in diameter) and 18 across the main wing (31 in diameter). Each wing fan uses a 100 kW motor, and each canard fan a 70 kW motor. The air vehicle was expected to weigh between 10,000 and 12,000 lb, about the size of a UH-1Y Venom, and cruise faster than 300 knots.

In April 2018, after the subscale demonstrator achieved the VTOL X-Plane major objectives, DARPA cancelled the project before full-scale flight testing. The cancellation was attributed to the lack of a successor to inherit the program and growing commercial interest, as electric distributed propulsion is used in Aurora’s eVTOL aircraft developed with Uber Elevate.

Reader's Guide

The Aurora XV-24 LightningStrike represents a significant experimental step in unmanned aerial vehicle propulsion and VTOL design. Its use of distributed electric propulsion—where a single turboshaft engine drives multiple generators to power an array of ducted fans—was a departure from conventional engine layouts and demonstrated a novel approach to vertical lift and forward flight. The program achieved its major objectives with a subscale demonstrator, validating the concept before cancellation in April 2018. The cancellation was driven by the absence of a follow-on program and the shift of commercial interest toward electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, a field where Aurora later applied similar technology in partnership with Uber Elevate. Although the full-scale XV-24A was never built or flight-tested, the LightningStrike contributed to the broader exploration of distributed electric propulsion for VTOL aircraft, influencing both military and commercial development paths. Its legacy lies in bridging experimental defense research with emerging civilian eVTOL applications.

Did You Know?

• Its three Honeywell generators produced three megawatts of electricity, equivalent to a commercial wind turbine.
• A 20-percent-scale demonstrator weighing 325 lb was flown on 29 March 2016.
• The project was cancelled in April 2018 after achieving major objectives, partly due to growing commercial interest in eVTOL aircraft.