Urban Aeronautics X-Hawk


The Urban Aeronautics X-Hawk is a proposed flying car designed by Rafi Yoeli in Yavne, Israel, being built by Metro Skyways Ltd., a subsidiary of Yoeli's privately held company, Urban Aeronautics. The company claims to have flown the car to a height of, and that greater heights are possible. The X-Hawk and its smaller unmanned version, the AirMule, would be used in search and rescue operations where a helicopter would be useless, or at least very dangerous, such as evacuating people from the upper stories of burning buildings, or delivering and extracting police and soldiers while very close to structures, narrow streets, and confined spaces, with a projected size similar to that of a large van.

Background

Urban Aeronautics Ltd. patented its design as Fancraft.
Fancraft technologies had registered 37 patents, with 12 additional patents pending in 2013.
Metro Skyways Ltd., a subsidiary of Urban Aeronautics Ltd., led the development of the X-Hawk and exercises exclusive license of manned air-taxi, air-rescue, and medical evacuation markets. Another subsidiary, Tactical Robotics Ltd. has taken the lead in the development of the AirMule and exercises exclusive licenses in unmanned military and national security markets.

Development

In 2004, the development and the proof-of-concept vehicle CityHawk completed more than 10 hours of hover testing near Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. Its success encouraged the development of the X-Hawk and the Mule.
Shortly after the X-Hawk LE concept was published by Urban Aeronautics.
Development is being done in parallel to the primary effort put into the Urban Aeronautics AirMule.
Urban Aeronautics plans to begin testing its CityHawk eVTOL in 2021.

Design

The X-Hawk is a vertical take-off and landing aircraft with no exposed rotors, configured as a tandem-fan, turbine-powered vehicle. Pilots will use a fly-by-wire multi-channel flight control system, with an automatic stabilization feature to help control the aircraft and maintain level flight. The ducted fan design allows the car to achieve the speed and maneuverability of a helicopter.

Variants

Urban Aeronautics is in contact with the United States Army and the militaries of other nations, including India and Italy, for possible sale of the AirMule.