It was 2017 and the Marines had a logistics problem. It was my first of many visits to the Pentagon, and as I sat down with a USMC Captain, I noticed commercial drones and drone parts everywhere: perched on desks, hanging from the ceiling, and in the corners of the room. US troops were being killed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan, and all hands were on deck to find solutions to this lethal problem. Six months earlier I had started Elroy Air with my friend and co-founder Clint Cope, an experienced product designer with an expansive knowledge of manufacturing techniques and sourcing hard-to-find components.
Clint and I had experience developing small unmanned systems at drone startups that tried to compete head-to-head with China’s DJI. Together we recognized a huge unmet potential for larger cargo drones. A series of discussions with forward-looking logisticians at organizations that would become our partners — FedEx, humanitarian aid shippers, and US military logisticians — led to our design of Chaparral: an autonomous vertical take-off and landing delivery drone for middle-mile express shipping, humanitarian aid, and military resupply.
Military strategists understand that logistics wins wars. Logistics were a critical component of the Allied victory in the Normandy campaign during World War II, and logistics missteps by the Russians hindered their invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As we concluded our conversation that 2017 morning at the Pentagon, the USMC Captain made the need for Chaparral crystal-clear, saying: “If I had that (Chaparral), I’d take it to Afghanistan with me when I ship back out next month!”
As we’ve worked with our partners over the years, their message has been consistent: runway-independent cargo UAS capable of moving a few hundred pounds across a few hundred miles will be hugely valuable. The impact of Chaparral will be expanded express networks for commercial shippers, immediate aid and relief in disaster, fire-fighting, and humanitarian situations, and rapid autonomous resupply for troops in the field.
As the Elroy Air team has worked to design, build and test the Chaparral, here are a few things we’ve learned:
To fly far, fly on wings!
There’s an old joke: “Helicopters don’t fly; they beat the air into submission.” Wings are nature’s evolved solution to powered flight, and winged aircraft can feature exceptional lift-to-drag ratio versus helicopters and multi-copter aircraft. It’s no coincidence that the majority of our peers in the electric air taxi industry have also adopted wing-based “lift-plus-cruise” aircraft configurations, to squeeze maximum range out of their battery-powered designs.
Redundancy = safety
With eight independent vertical lift rotors, Chaparral can handle motor-out / rotor-out scenarios safely, completing its mission even if something goes wrong. The quad-rotor configuration — popular with consumer camera-drones and some larger unmanned systems — lacks this critical redundancy, creating a single-point failure risk at each rotor-head.
Low mechanical complexity = low maintenance burden
Chaparral’s key moving parts are its turboshaft engine, flight-surface servos, and electric motors — all high-reliability systems with well-characterized maintenance intervals. In order to keep the maintenance effort and cost burden for Chaparral operations reasonable, we avoided introducing mechanical complexity for flight-critical systems wherever possible. A key example of this is our use of fixed pitch rotors — avoiding the costly frequent maintenance that variable-pitch rotorheads (both vertical, and tail-rotor heads) require.
Automated cargo saves turnaround time and reduces personnel burden
This capability is really unique to our aircraft: Chaparral has automated payload pickup/dropoff robotics enabling high utilization of the vehicle for continuous operation. We designed this feature to match the efficiency of drop-shipping, in which a truck can drop off one load and pick up another — the driver continuing on her way and keeping the power unit (the cab) highly utilized, good for operational economics. We discovered along the way that Chaparral’s ability to pick up and deliver supplies in unattended / unsafe areas is also transformational for humanitarian and military shippers, who sometimes can’t guarantee safety in the locations where they operate.
Hybrid-electric is the right technology for the near-future
The redundancy and minimal mechanical complexity of distributed electric propulsion is good for autonomy and a low maintenance burden. But batteries are not yet energy-dense enough to power long-range (multi-100-mi) flights for a VTOL aircraft like Chaparral. Also, battery charging infrastructure is not reliably available in defense, humanitarian, and commercial missions in austere locations. The solution is a hybrid-electric architecture, which we have developed over years of sustained effort at Elroy Air. Chaparral’s vertical and forward propulsion motors are electric, and the aircraft has a battery pack to store electrical power and drive its motors. A gas turbine generator acts as a range-extender, providing a source of electrical power to recharge the battery, as well as contributing direct electrical power to the propulsion system. The result: safe redundant propulsion, with longer-range and flexible operations vs battery-electric aircraft.
Moonshots are for billionaires, build an MVP
Air-taxi companies need a few billion dollars to get their aircraft certified and into commercial operations. This capital requirement derives from the necessary team size and composition, the scope and duration of R&D and FAA certification process required to develop a passenger-ready system, and for those producing vehicles on their own — the stand-up of scaled manufacturing. A cargo UAS like Chaparral on the other hand, is low cost to develop and field by comparison.
Today Elroy Air has more than 1,000 Chaparral vehicles in its commercial and humanitarian demand backlog (LOIs / MOUs / Master Purchase Agreements), representing $3B+ of future revenue opportunity. 140 units of the backlog are deposit-backed agreements, with paid deposits on 25 vehicles and options on 115.
The journey is long and difficult to develop and field a new unmanned aircraft like Chaparral, but we are a determined and resilient team with visionary investors and advisors. The USMC Captain in the Pentagon who gave me the early insight about the need for Chaparral on the battlefield has since transitioned to new assignments — but his words inspired us to action. At Elroy Air we are pushing hard every day to get Chaparral downrange, to serve his colleagues and our country.
- Dave Merrill, Co-Founder and CEO of Elroy Air
