Elroy Air’s Chaparral autonomous hybrid-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. (Photo: Elroy Air)
The Army in August awarded a $46.1 million contract to Elroy Air to test and experiment with the company’s Chaparral autonomous hybrid-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft for heavy cargo operations to ensure the drone can be easily used by soldiers in various environments.
The San Francisco-based company on Tuesday said the firm-fixed-price Phase III Small Business Innovation Research award builds on two other Army contracts the past two years to improve the Group 4 unmanned aircraft system’s ability to operate with its forces in austere and contested environments by “enhancing its modular multi-mission payload versatility and payload delivery mechanisms.”
The contract was awarded on Aug. 17 with an initial obligation of $5.1 million in fiscal year 2026 research, development, test and evaluation defense-wide funds being obligated.
Elroy Air in July said it recently demonstrated three modes of autonomous cargo delivery for the Army using Chaparral. The demonstration included two payload drops in a single flight on July 15 in a close-in hover mode followed by another during forward flight without personnel required at the delivery points. A separate event featured a ground delivery with the payload releasing without personnel.
Under the new contract, Chaparral will be used in large-scale test events, allowing the company to further develop the cargo-carrying drone for operations in contested electromagnetic spectrum, and continue to increase the “functionality of our modular payload system,” a company spokesperson told Defense Daily.
Chaparral is runway independent and can carry more than 500 pounds of payload. The aircraft has an extended range up to 450 miles.
“This contract reinforces the critical role that heavy-lift autonomous hybrid VTOL drones will play in modern defense operations,” Andrew Clare, Elroy’s CEO, said in a statement.
A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.
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