STRATFORD — Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. officially launched a new technology-development arm — Sikorsky Innovations — at a February 1 press event at the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford.
Sikorsky Aircraft is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. (UTC). The state’s largest employer and manufacturer, UTC maintains its corporate headquarters two blocks from the Science Center in downtown Hartford.
Asserting that the mission of Sikorsky Innovations is to “redefine the future of vertical flight,” Mark Miller, the company’s vice president of research and engineering, explained, "We are currently working on challenges in the areas of high-speed flight, optionally piloted aircraft, systems that enable safe operation in blinding, brown-out conditions, and many others that only a few years ago might have been considered technologically and economically unfeasible."
New technology as well as changing military requirements may be reasons that Sikorsky is choosing to consolidate and redouble its research efforts now. In partnership with Lockheed Martin, a Sikorsky competitor, Bloomfield-based Kaman Helicopter, announced earlier this month successful test flights of an unmanned helicopter for military use that they hope to see used to re-supply troops in Afghanistan.
With hundreds of research initiatives and nearly 90 years of helicopter development, Sikorsky is hoping to “increase the scope of previous efforts by expanding collaborative arrangements spanning government technology agencies, academic institutions, other UTC facilities and entrepreneurial businesses where research and product development will take place in cooperation with Sikorsky's engineers and technicians,” explained Miller.
Sikorsky officials say that development projects are currently under way at more than 20 locations nationwide. Sikorsky Innovations is tasked to “tailor Sikorsky Aircraft processes to provide technology customers with compelling proposals that shorten execution timelines and reduce costs,” according to a company spokesperson.
The company says it will invest more than $1 billion over the next ten years, including investments in “small, agile high-technology companies with aligned interests.” Sikorsky recently completed an investment in Eagle Aviation Technologies, LLC of Hampton, Va. an advanced prototyping firm for the aerospace, wind and marine industries. Sikorsky Innovations will manage its far-flung research activities as a "virtual" organization based at the company's main facility in Stratford.
According to Sikorsky Innovations Director Chris VanBuiten, "Under founder Igor Sikorsky's leadership, Sikorsky introduced the first practical helicopter, the first four-engine airplane, the first enclosed-cockpit aircraft, and many other innovations. Sikorsky Innovations is poised to continue and accelerate this legacy by engineering new process technologies that will result in new rapid-prototyping tools, advanced manufacturing automation, virtual reality simulation, high-performance computing and many other development game-changers."
UTC was awarded tax credits of $115 million from the federal government last month to underwrite clean energy manufacturing of its PW1000G jet engine as well as for upgrading a UTC Power manufacturing facility for producing stationary fuel cells.
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