Photo: LiquidPiston
All throughout the year some of America's most important military branches, the Army and the Air Force, have pumped billions into technologies and systems that could ensure their supremacy in future wars. In very rare cases though did they run into each other in this R&D field, as the requirements each of them need fulfilled are fundamentally different.
Yet there is one crucial piece of tech that appears to be a perfect fit for several of the future technologies both the Army and the USAF are planning: a tiny heavy-fueled rotary engine made by a company called LiquidPiston.
This crew's current star product is the XTS-210, a scalable rotary engine that can deliver from one to 1,000 hp, depending on needs. That may not seem very impressive, given how there are plenty of technologies that are capable of such outputs, but the LiquidPiston solution is said to offer that power from a package 80 percent smaller and lighter than engines of comparable levels.
That's revolutionary, and the idea immediately captured the attention of the Army and the Air Force. America's soldiers are already funding and bettering the tech for possible deployment as a primary engine or an auxiliary power unit for drones, sea, and air vehicles, but also for use in field generators.
On its end, America's flyboys are eyeing the tech for pretty much the same uses, but upped the ante last week by throwing more money at LiquidPiston. This time, the USAF is asking the company to come up with a heavy-fueled rotary engine rated at over 90 horsepower and suitable to be fitted in a modular hybrid power system.
The main purpose of the system is to form a sort of power pack that can be used to power anything from drones to mobile operating bases. Given how the Air Force is currently working on a self-contained mobile trailer that could support aircraft operations from remote areas (the Adaptive Basing Trailer), a power pack deployment for such a use is targeted as well.
The USAF awarded LiquidPiston a total of $35 million for the task, giving the company three years to come up with a hybrid power system. That amount includes the $15 million announced by the Air Force earlier in June.
The specifics of the solution being imagined for the USAF are not known, other than the money will support "a new class of hybrid power solution and a new engine program based on its X-Engine heavy fuel platform and High Efficiency Hybrid Cycle (HEHC) optimized thermodynamic cycle."
Even if the contract is meant to produce a tangible result in three years, it's not clear when we'll be able to see a real-life military application of the LiquidPiston engine.
This crew's current star product is the XTS-210, a scalable rotary engine that can deliver from one to 1,000 hp, depending on needs. That may not seem very impressive, given how there are plenty of technologies that are capable of such outputs, but the LiquidPiston solution is said to offer that power from a package 80 percent smaller and lighter than engines of comparable levels.
That's revolutionary, and the idea immediately captured the attention of the Army and the Air Force. America's soldiers are already funding and bettering the tech for possible deployment as a primary engine or an auxiliary power unit for drones, sea, and air vehicles, but also for use in field generators.
On its end, America's flyboys are eyeing the tech for pretty much the same uses, but upped the ante last week by throwing more money at LiquidPiston. This time, the USAF is asking the company to come up with a heavy-fueled rotary engine rated at over 90 horsepower and suitable to be fitted in a modular hybrid power system.
The main purpose of the system is to form a sort of power pack that can be used to power anything from drones to mobile operating bases. Given how the Air Force is currently working on a self-contained mobile trailer that could support aircraft operations from remote areas (the Adaptive Basing Trailer), a power pack deployment for such a use is targeted as well.
The USAF awarded LiquidPiston a total of $35 million for the task, giving the company three years to come up with a hybrid power system. That amount includes the $15 million announced by the Air Force earlier in June.
The specifics of the solution being imagined for the USAF are not known, other than the money will support "a new class of hybrid power solution and a new engine program based on its X-Engine heavy fuel platform and High Efficiency Hybrid Cycle (HEHC) optimized thermodynamic cycle."
Even if the contract is meant to produce a tangible result in three years, it's not clear when we'll be able to see a real-life military application of the LiquidPiston engine.
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