Are fixed wings the shape of quadcopters to come?

Quadcopters are to hobbyist drones what biplanes were to the skies above the Western Front, a versatile, ubiquitous form that may shortly seem incredibly quaint. Everything that appeals about quadcopters, from their ease of use, vast market share, and reliable hovering ability, comes paired with a set of limitations, such as short flight ranges, limited power supply, and overall energy inefficiency. Which is perhaps why, when it comes to the commercial market for mapping drones, we’re starting to see rotors added to fixed-wing bodies.

The Fieldwork Company, a surveying firm based in the Netherlands, recently produced a brief overview of three VTOL mapping drones: the Vertical Technologies DeltaQuad, Wingtra WingtraOne, and AtmosUAV Marlyn. All primarily fly as fixed-wing craft, with both the WingtraOne and the Marlyn launching as tailsitters, while the DeltaQuad features the four rotors of a quadcopter and a pusher propeller.

The survey is as much internal justification as it is public document, written as a way for the company to state why they chose one vendor over the other. Still, there is value in looking at the trio of models as a window into what the field offers, and more specifically, what the commercial market could offer a military buyer off the shelf.

Priced between $21,000 and $34,000, these are not particularly cheap machines, and slot into purchase point beyond that of the more expendable hobbyist quadcopters. These drones can all fly for between 50 and 110 minutes, traveling ranges from 18 to 60 miles. The survey is an interesting snapshot of the market, and the existing capabilities available to any state or nonstate actor with a modest budget for aerial surveillance (or surveying).

It also suggests, as the Pentagon looks to move beyond existing drone models and towards a future drone fleet, that VTOL capabilities could be easier to integrate across models than current rail-launched and hook-retrieved systems suggest. Adding rotors to surveying platforms can provide most of the capability of a quadcopter in a more efficient form fact. Converting fixed-wings to tail-sitters means a little work of landing algorithm but ultimately suggests much easier launch and relaunch capability, without the need for specialized equipment.

That these innovations are already in the commercial market means adapting them military models should be possible, at least at the speed of acquisitions.

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