Electric Propulsion Products Flown on Multiple DoD Aircraft Intended for Fielding with the Warfighter
Leveraging capabilities derived from Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Phase I and Phase II SBIR programs that started in 2008, CRG’s quiet electric propulsor products have seen significant success over the past decade. The OSD SBIR, which was managed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), enabled CRG to create processes and toolsets for fan stage aerodynamic design and optimization that resulted in a very high-performance, quiet, vaneaxial fan demonstration in an Air Movement and Control Association (AMMC)-certified wind tunnel.
This toolset was subsequently modified and used in the execution of the IARPA Great Horned Owl program in 2012 where CRG successfully demonstrated a flight weight propulsor in NASA and Navy aero-acoustic wind tunnels, that met the Phase II program metrics by the end of Phase I.
Working directly with two Defense Primes, variants of CRG’s propulsor products have since flown on two different DoD demonstrator aircraft, with a third one currently in development. In 2022, CRG executed an exclusive license agreement with Lectratek LLC, a CRG spinoff company, granting rights for the sale, manufacturing, development and support of these products into the commercial electric aviation market. To date, this technology has been matured through SBIR funds and more than $7M of non-SBIR funding.