BAE Systems outline ambitious plans for PHASA-35 aircraft
- 20th Jan 2025
FOLLOWING a series of successful flight tests last year BAE Systems and its subsidiary Prismatic Ltd are setting out some ambitious plans for their PHASA-35 aircraft.
The stratospheric aircraft, which completed a number of test flights from Spaceport America in New Mexico, flew for 24 hours before landing and being relaunch shortly afterwards.
Bob Davidson, CEO, BAE Systems’ Prismatic, revealed a next generation aircraft, with increased capabilities, is ready to make its way across the Atlantic in preparation for test flights this year where they are hoping to fly the aircraft for a prolonged period and increased payload as they continue to develop and scope its real-world application across a series of flights this year.
“Where we are at with the programme today, we completed successful flights in 2024. We conducted two flights which is important, one at 66,000 feet. We also carried a meaningful payload to demonstrate the aircraft as a system,” said Bob
“There are a lot of competitors trying to crack stratospheric flight. The task is to put meaningful equipment there, the payload that we flew was 10kg and we are capable of carrying up to 15kg.”
“We also brought the aircraft down and within three shifts we were able to regenerate the aircraft and launch again which is another great advantage from an operational point of view.
“The exciting thing about this year is we have just finished our next generation aircraft which has been packed up into boxes to go to the US for this year’s flight trials and the difference between this aircraft and the one we have previously flown is we will have two and a half times the stored energy which will give us multi-week and multi-month flights with our airframe.”
The aircraft began its journey in 2017 where it was first conceptualised by Prismatic to develop two aircraft, before BAE Systems then fully acquired Prismatic in 2021.
A team of more than 100 employees are working on the aircraft from its base in Alton, Hampshire and leading the programme is Chris Roberts, Head of Programme at BAE Systems’ Prismatic.
Whilst discussing the aircraft’s application, at the time of recording news headlines were dominated with updates about the LA wildfires, with aviation once again showcasing its versatility as clips of waterbombers desperately dousing the flames were beamed onto our screens.
Circling back to PHASA and its potential capabilities, Chris outlined ways in which the stratospheric aircraft could offer unique support during natural disasters,
Chris said: “It’s a really topical case in terms of real-life application. We do have work underway to integrate a mobile phone capability, so think of PHASA as a mobile phone tower in the sky.
“In a scenario where people can’t connect to a tower either because they are out of range or in a situation where the infrastructure has been destroyed, they will be able to connect to the aircraft.
“Staying with the wildfires, there is definitely a use case where PHASA-35 could be equipped with a sensor suite that would identify the fire as soon as it starts, that could enable firefighters to get to the fire before it gets out of control.
“So that is a topical example and we have a system capable of carrying payloads that will be able to solve some problems there.
“One of the things that really excites me about PHASA-35 is we have all of the military applications and they are going to be game changing in terms of some of the ranges and wide area surveillance tasks it can do but the commercial use cases, especially the communications one have the potential to deliver a really positive impact for society.”
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