Defense, security & relief · Against the utility helicopter
The 100 kg run,
without the crew.
Flown by a utility helicopter, that resupply run commits two aircrew, a turbine hour, and a maintenance interval. This aircraft flies it, scheduled or urgent.
The boundary
Each aircraft does the work it is built for.
The uncrewed cargo aircraft is a hybrid-electric VTOL: it lands like a helicopter, cruises on a wing, and refuels from any station, deck, or cache. One airframe flies cargo, sensors, or a relay, and trades payload for range.
What the uncrewed cargo aircraft takes
The resupply run, routine or urgent
Rations, ammunition, blood, and spares, 100+ kg at a time, launched on the call.
The sensing sortie
EO/IR, SIGINT, or radar in the belly pod, out to about 1,908 km on extra tanks.
The relay orbit
A loitering communications node above dispersed forces, no one aboard to bring home.
What stays with the helicopter
Heavy lift
Tonnes-class loads, vehicles, and slung cargo under the hook.
Hover-intensive work
Hoist rescue, sling work, and long holds over the objective.
Anyone aboard
Troop movement, casualty evacuation, and command staff in the cabin.
The comparison
Side by side, at load.
Three alternatives, three unrelated limits. The multicopter gives up distance and needs power installed at both ends. The helicopter gives up cost and puts a crew on a routine run. Sea and road give up time.
| Cargo multicopter | Zuri uncrewed cargo VTOL | Twin-engine utility helicopter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payload | ≈5–30 kg at full load | 145 kg max · 115 kg at full range | Tonnes-class |
| Usable range, full load | ~16–30 km | 569 km with the full 30-minute reserve · 679 km by design | Comparable, with fuel stops |
| Cruise | Tens of km/h | 220 km/h on the wing | Comparable |
| Crew aboard | None | None; one operator on the ground | Two, at risk on routine runs |
| Ground needs | Charging, calm weather | Any fuel station, deck, or cache | Fuel, hangar, crew base |
| Fuel | Grid electricity | AVGAS, automotive gasoline, or bioethanol | Jet fuel |
Representative classes, internal engineering analysis, standard conditions; the comparison crosses categories. Zuri figures are design targets for the cargo aircraft, validated by its own flight test campaign.
The economics
What our flight costs.
A 300 km delivery, built from the lines an operator actually pays. A crewed helicopter flies the same 100 kg run at eight to fifteen times the cost per flight hour.
Internal bottom-up model, standard conditions, fixed costs spread over 1,015 flight hours a year. Indicative, not a performance guarantee.
Per flight hour
One Black Hawk hour pays for fifteen of ours.
Official 2026 rates for two US Army utility helicopters, against our cost model, both before depreciation, in US dollars.
The number you know is the cost per flight hour of the type you fly, from your own budget documents. Set it beside our €261: the difference is the saving on every flight hour that moves.
Helicopters: US Department of Defense, FY 2026 reimbursable rates, effective 1 October 2025, operations and maintenance plus military personnel, without asset use. They are the US military's own accounting rates; European operators' costs differ.
Ours: our bottom-up cost model, before depreciation, converted at the ECB reference rate of 12 October 2026, 1.1181. Indicative, with no in-service record yet.
Emissions
A fraction of a helicopter's carbon.
Well-to-wake CO2e over a 300 km leg against three light helicopters, each aircraft carrying the most it can lift, in grams per kilogram-kilometer.
Based on public information and our own research. Bioethanol's combustion carbon is biogenic and excluded. The low end is cane ethanol, the high end ethanol made in Europe from wheat, corn, or beet; anything we buy lands between them.
Helicopter burn is the midpoint of published figures, the Bell 407's from our own 300 km model with its useful load from the published specification. Each load is capacity less fuel, and less an 85 kg pilot where there is one. These are light helicopters; the twin-engine utility class burns more per hour and carries more per flight.
Safety
Designed to keep flying.
A twin-engine rule protects the people aboard a helicopter. This aircraft carries none, and is designed to keep flying after a single failure all the same.
Distributed propulsion
Eight rotors and redundant fly-by-wire are designed for continued control after a single-rotor failure, with no single point of failure.
Two stores of energy
Fuel and a battery are two stores of energy, which is redundancy. After a generator failure, the battery carries the landing.
These are design properties of the cargo aircraft. Its own flight test campaign validates them; TD 2.0 proves the architecture, not this airframe's limits.
In the fleet
The helicopter flies the missions that need a helicopter.
Two aircraft in defense livery along the coast, at dusk. A render.
Move the 100 kg run to an aircraft with no one aboard and the utility fleet gets its hours, its aircrew, and its maintenance intervals back for the lifts, hoists, and movements that need them. The uncrewed cargo aircraft flies from the same fuel, the same pad, and the same logistics chain, with one operator on the ground in command.
Frequently asked questions
About the aircraft and the helicopter.
Does the uncrewed cargo aircraft replace helicopters?
No. It takes the routine 100 kg run off the utility helicopter fleet, and the urgent one, so two aircrew are not flown into risk for a load that fits in its cargo bay. It launches loaded, with one operator on the ground and no crew to scramble. Heavy lift, hover-intensive work, and anything with a person aboard stay with the helicopter.
Is the uncrewed cargo aircraft a drone?
Yes, in the regulatory sense: it is an uncrewed aircraft, flown under the rules EASA writes for drones, in the Specific category. It is not a multicopter. It lifts off vertically and then flies on a wing, which is why it carries 100+ kg hundreds of kilometers where a typical cargo drone carries 5 to 30 kg a few dozen. It is remotely piloted: one operator on the ground is in command of the mission while automation handles the flying.
Which helicopters is the comparison against?
The twin-engine utility class that European forces fly for routine resupply and liaison: types in the H145M, UH-60M, NH90, and Mi-17 bracket. The table uses the class rather than one type because the answer is the same across it: tonnes of payload, comparable range with fuel stops, two aircrew aboard, and a hangar and crew base behind every flight. The cost per flight hour uses two US Army types because their rates are officially published; the emissions chart uses light helicopters with published fuel burn.
Can the uncrewed cargo aircraft fly a helicopter's routes?
The ones a 100 kg load flies, yes. 679 km by design and 569 km with a full 30-minute reserve, from a pad, a deck, or open ground at both ends, refueling in minutes on AVGAS, automotive gasoline, or bioethanol.
Send us one helicopter run.
Tell us the origin, destination, load, and how often it flies, and we will show what moves to the uncrewed cargo aircraft and what stays with the helicopter.