Wingspan: 400 feet Weight: Over 2,000 kilos First Flight: N/A
In 2010, Boeing won an $89m contract to construct a plane for DARPA’s VULTURE II demonstration program. VULTURE was a spy drone intended to circle indefinitely over a goal—supposedly “Very-high altitude, Ultra-endurance, Loitering Theater Unmanned Reconnaissance Element.”
Boeing’s solution was SolarEagle.
“SolarEagle is a uniquely configured, large unmanned aircraft designed to eventually remain on station at stratospheric altitudes for not less than five years,” said Pat O’Neil, program manager at Boeing’s Phantom Works program.
SolarEagle’s first flight was scheduled for 2014, but this system bumped into difficulties and DARPA canceled it in 2012. As an alternative, the agency backed off from constructing an aircraft and focused on higher solar cell and energy storage technology for future long-endurance programs.
This was not quite the top for Boeing. In 2017 it acquired Aurora Flight Sciences, which built structural components of SolarEagle, and had special expertise on this area.