Aurora Flight Sciences Shows Liberty Lifter Concept Of Operations | Aviation

The video shows how Liberty Lifter can combine heavy-lift transport at the scale of a ship with the speed of an aircraft for fast logistics missions in a sea environment.

Aurora Flight Sciences, which is developing a Liberty Lifter Seaplane Wing-in-Ground Effect full-scale demonstrator for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has released a video showing the intended concept of operations of its design. The company says the design has the benefit of combining transport at the scale of a ship with the speed of an aircraft, with a concept that can maximize efficiency by flying in ground effect and provide fast, heavy-lift transport that does not require an airstrip or shipping port.

The video starts by showing the vehicle flying in ground effect very close to the surface of the ocean, approaching its target. Then, after a water landing, the Liberty Lifter design gets close to the shore and open its rear ramp to unload amphibious vehicles begore quickly taking off again.

As we reported last year, DARPA started a program to create a long-range, low-cost X-Plane capable of seaborne strategic and tactical heavy lift, similar in size and capacity to the C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft. Two teams, General Atomics working with Maritime…