The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced plans to design and produce a massive new seaplane capable of carrying large amounts of personnel and material.
The agency selected two teams — General Atomics working with Maritime Applied Physics Corporation and Aurora Flight Sciences working with Gibbs & Cox and ReconCraft — to work on the new plane.
The plane will be called the Liberty Lifter, according to its website. Each team has produced different designs and will need to compromise to decide on a single model to design, build, float, and fly.
“We are excited to kick off this program and looking forward to working closely with both performer teams as they mature their point-of-departure design concepts through Phase 1,” DARPA Liberty Lifter Program Manager Christopher Kent said.
“The two teams have taken distinctly different design approaches that will enable us to explore a relatively large design space during Phase 1,” he added.
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The Aurora Flight Sciences team produced a more traditional design. It resembles the United States's largest aircraft in service, the C-5 Galaxy, featuring a single hull, high wings, and eight turboprops.
The General Atomics team produced a radically different design. It features two hulls, a midwing design, and a remarkable 12 turboprops.
"The Liberty Lifter program aims to design, build, float, and fly an affordable, innovative, and disruptive seaplane that operates efficiently in ground effect (< 100 feet above surface), can sustain flight altitudes up to 10,000 feet mean sea level (MSL), and enables efficient theater-range transport of large payloads at speeds far exceeding existing sea lift platforms," a description on the DARPA website reads. "Liberty Lifter will use low cost manufacturing akin to ship fabrication in building a highly innovative seaplane capable of meeting DoD heavy lift requirements (100+ tons) that operates with runway and port independence."
Phase 1 will last for 18 months, at the end of which the agency hopes to produce a single, effective model. Phase 2 is planned to begin in mid-2024. It will see the production and first flight of the new aircraft.
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The behemoth is reminiscent of the famous "Caspian Sea Monster," a massive Soviet-produced sea-plane with much of the same aims. Designers of the Liberty Lifter will likely opt for a different design, however, as the aircraft was so heavy that it was unable to fly more than a few hundred feet above the sea, according to the National Interest.