A vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft design that recently emerged at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, which TWZ was first to report on, has been identified. It is a full-scale technology demonstrator (FSTD) belonging to Hyundai Motor Group subsidiary Supernal. Work on the FSTD, which was expected to fly for the first time last year, is feeding into the development of Supernal’s S-A2 electrically-powered VTOL, or eVTOL, design.
The Air Current was the first to report on Supernal’s connection to the previously unseen aircraft at Mojave. Photographer Matt Hartman had previously taken pictures of the aircraft and posted them on social media. Supernal has been working with other firms to craft the FSTD, including U.K.-based GKN Aerospace. TWZ has reached out to both companies for more details about the demonstrator.
Supernal did announce last July that GKN had delivered the complete composite wing assembly for the FSTD and that the aircraft’s tail booms were expected to arrive by the end of that month. A previously released picture of the wing structure, seen below, and the mention of booms align fully with the aircraft that has now emerged at Mojave.
The picture of the wing assembly does raise new questions about whether the four wing-mounted rotors on the FSTD are indeed fixed, as had appeared to be the case from what was visible in Hartman’s pictures, or can articulate between vertical and horizontal facing modes. The aircraft does have two larger additional rotors in clearly tilting wing-tip nacelle pods.
Otherwise, details about the FSTD remain limited, but readers can find TWZ‘s full initial analysis of the design here.
The FSTD does differ substantially from the S-A2 concept that Supernal officially unveiled at the 2024 Farnborough Airshow in the United Kingdom. That design has four pairs of tilting rotor assemblies, two on each wing, as well as a v-tail rather than a twin-boom type. The center fuselage also has a more streamlined look with a single-piece main windscreen. The internal configuration that has been shown so far consists of a single pilot seated in front and space for four passengers in the cabin behind.
“S-A2 will cruise at 120 mph and have an initial range of 60 miles to meet typical city operation needs. The aircraft utilizes a distributed electric propulsion architecture and will operate quietly to meet community noise standards,” according to a previous Supernal press release. “Most importantly, S-A2 is engineered to achieve global commercial aviation safety standards with a robust airframe structure that includes redundant components in critical systems such as powertrain, flight controls, and avionics.”
Supernal has been targeting a first flight for the S-A2 in 2026, which it also says will have a total payload capacity of 1,000 pounds, and hopes to see the aircraft enter commercial service in 2028. The FSTD, which as noted was expected to fly for the first time last year, has been presented as an important risk-reduction asset in support of the S-A2 development plan.
“2024 is a pivotal year for Supernal’s eVTOL development, marking the transition from engineering design to the build and execution phases,” David McBride, the company’s chief technology officer, said in a statement around the unveiling at Farnborough last year. “In addition to gaining instrumental learnings from our full-scale technology demonstrator, we will also begin prototype development and continue refining our production vehicle for scaled manufacturing in the coming months.”
As TWZ highlighted in our initial report on this aircraft, the market space for crewed and uncrewed eVTOLs, as well as hybrid-electric designs that use turbines to produce electricity to drive the rotors, has dramatically expanded in recent years. The commercial aviation sector has been a key focus of these development efforts, including Supernal’s S-A2. Armed forces, including the U.S. military, are also working to field or at least evaluate new VTOL designs, including eVTOL types, to perform a variety of missions.
“For the U.S. military, interest in new VTOL aircraft designs, including the active development of types with more traditional propulsion arrangements, is being driven in part by a desire for greater runway independence amid concerns about the growing vulnerability of air bases, as well as other established facilities, during a future high-end conflict. This, in turn, has led to the development of new concepts of operations focused heavily on expeditionary and distributed operations, including in remote and austere sites with limited existing infrastructure. New VTOL designs, especially uncrewed ones, are also increasingly viewed as important components of future supply chains for forces in forward areas, including right on the front lines. Casualty evacuation and the extraction of downed pilots, including from behind enemy lines, have also been presented as potential roles for such aircraft.“
When it comes to work on Supernal’s S-A2, specifically, the company’s FSTD is now undergoing at least some degree of testing at Mojave.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com