Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Highly Engaged Employees

DARPA is asking for a design like this to take advantage of ground effect, which occurs when an aircraft's wing deflects air downward and proximity to the ground generates a cushioning effect due to the compression of air between the bottom of the wing and the ground. This boosts lift and lowers drag to yield a substantial overall improvement in ef... ficiency. Ground effect works on both water and land, but you can take advantage of it for only so long on land before your aircraft runs into something. Which is why oceans are the ideal place for these aircraft-or ships, depending on your perspective. During the late 1980s, the Soviets (and later the Russians) leveraged ground effect in the design of a handful of awesomely bizarre ships and aircraft. There's the VVA-14, which was also an airplane, along with the vehicle shown in DARPA's video above, the Lun-class ekranoplan, which operated until the late 1990s.Read More