Kristen Smith 
- The Nomad 100 uses a rotor-blown wing design that pairs helicopter hover with fixed-wing speed and range
- Sikorsky will next run the aircraft through an intensive flight test campaign at a government facility
- DARPA picked Sikorsky’s MATRIX autonomy as the tool integrated across all five EVADE platforms
Lockheed Martin‘s Sikorsky has finished initial ground and flight testing of its Nomad 100 uncrewed aerial system under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Early VTOL Aircraft Demonstration, or EVADE, program. Lockheed announced the milestone on Wednesday, formalized at the Farnborough International Airshow.
Rich Benton, vice president and general manager of Sikorsky, said the Nomad 100 is built to operate as part of a crewed-uncrewed team, complementing missions “from austere forward operating bases to ship decks and unimproved landing zones.” Sikorsky will next put the aircraft through an intensive flight test campaign at a government facility, running through a range of multirole missions.
What Is the Sikorsky Nomad 100?
The Nomad 100 uses a rotor-blown wing design with a twin prop-rotor system, pairing the vertical lift and hover of a helicopter with the speed, range and endurance of a fixed-wing aircraft. The 18-foot-wingspan, Group 3 platform can take off and land vertically, hover, cruise on the wing, and operate without a runway over land or sea. Sikorsky unveiled the broader Nomad family in October 2025.
“We use the term ‘family’ to point to a key attribute of the design; its ability to be scaled in size from a small Group 3 UAS to the footprint equivalent of a Black Hawk helicopter,” Benton said at the time.
How Does DARPA’s EVADE Program Use Sikorsky Autonomy?
EVADE brings together five companies to demonstrate rapidly fielded VTOL drones for the warfighter. DARPA selected Sikorsky’s MATRIX autonomous technology as the autonomy tool integrated into all five platforms in the program. The company said MATRIX has logged more than 1,000 flight hours and has been integrated onto over 20 different platforms. Sikorsky’s other autonomous aircraft, including the S-70UAS U-Hawk and its hybrid electric demonstrator, also run on MATRIX.
