Submarine deployable helicopter

Students at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and Pennsylvania State University have jointly designed an advanced autonomous compact rotorcraft that could be deployed from a submarine in support of special forces operations.

For their efforts, the team recently picked up the first prize in a competition organised by the American Helicopter Society which was sponsored by Sikorsky.

The student brief required that they develop an autonomous vehicle that could be deployed from a submarine while at a periscope depth of 15 metres, rise to sea level, be able to float and take off from a rough sea, and then fly 260km, deploy/pickup two crew members and return safely to the submerged submarine.

The Technion/Penn-State vehicle, named “Waterspout”, is a one of a kind concept vehicle, capable of exiting the submarine, floating safely to the water surface, and taking off vertically to carry out its mission. The design allows the vehicle to exit through the submarine’s existing missile-silo hatch, thus preventing expensive and complex changes to the submarine’s exterior.