WARRIOR: CAPABILITY BREAKTHOUGH
The challenge
A change in approach to achieving flying speed
There are at least twice as many considerations in designing a seaplane than a landplane, most of them contrary. Even where the considerations appear straightforward, it can take a large and high-risk investment to assess designs, with no certainty of solutions where problems arise. Even minor subtleties in rates of curvature along a hull can "snatch" and either break an aircraft directly or throw it so that it crashes dangerously into the next wave.
The superb seaplane development expertise that existed in America, Europe, and USSR through the late 1960s is now no longer available. Texts on seaplane design misdirect the seaplane student, defining the need for powerful planing surfaces, hard chines and mid-hull steps, to avoid Coanda effect (suction), evade Froude's laws (speed limiting), and to allow rotation for take-off. These very features kill seaplane capability every time – costly, heavy, high-drag on water and in the air, high shock-loads in choppy water, and spray over engines and aircraft that any power-wash would aspire to.
Hence, the difficulty of designing a seaplane that does any more than before, is a great challenge. The new generation of seaplane designers sticks to old recipes and convention. The great potential of enabling aviation to work in the maritime sector remains illusive.
The solution
Warrior has developed original hull forms to enable a "reversed" process to achieve take-off speed. Unlike any other, it transfers a heavily loaded seaplane from displacement to planing once the bow wave is left far behind it! Warrior's aircraft designs have been meticulously tuned to get the best out of this hull. Using many development and test techniques, these activities are re-writing the future rule-book on how to leave the constraints of old behind and to give aviation the freedom of the maritime sector.
This is a Patented prior art, now reliable, repeatable, boxed up and offered to the aviation industry and aircraft buyer. Two embodiments in projects underway are the GULL UAV seaplane and the Centaur amphibious aircraft.