SoftBank Corp. has announced that the company’s “Sunglider” — a large-scale, solar-powered, uncrewed aircraft system (“UAS”) designed for High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) stratospheric telecommunications — was used in a field trial conducted by AeroVironment Inc. (NASDAQ: AVAV, “AeroVironment”) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in New Mexico, USA, in early August of 2024. During the trial, Sunglider succeeded in achieving stratospheric flight.
Sunglider is a large-scale UAS for HAPS. It is larger than other publicly announced HAPS UAS*, with a wingspan of 78m and the capability to carry payloads weighing up to 75kg. That means its ability to deliver stable, high-speed and robust high-capacity mobile connectivity is a key feature. The Sunglider aircraft used in this stratospheric field trial was an improved version that incorporated structural and functional enhancements to enable better performance than the previous one.
SoftBank’s aircraft development partner AeroVironment used Sunglider — which it has jointly developed with SoftBank — for this field trial with the DoD. The field trial operation successfully demonstrated multi-payload, stratospheric flight, to support the DoD’s requirements, and it gave SoftBank an opportunity to gain insights for future aircraft development. Through this field trial, SoftBank verified performance enhancements in the latest Sunglider aircraft, and it plans to utilize trial data for future aircraft development to make further improvements.
SoftBank will continue to conduct research and development for its HAPS business with the aim of bridging the digital divide around the world and providing emergency communications during disasters, and solving other social issues.
Junichi Miyakawa, President & CEO of SoftBank Corp., said, “SoftBank began its HAPS program in 2017 as a global pioneer, and since then has been leading the industry in research and development, field trials, standardization and other activities to realize HAPS-based services. For our aircraft platform, we’ve been working with our partner AeroVironment to develop Sunglider, an industry-leading large-scale* HAPS aircraft. The HAPS service we’re aiming to provide will offer high-speed, high-capacity, high-quality, and stable communications that is only possible with a large-scale aircraft. We’re extremely pleased we could verify the significant performance improvements of Sunglider through this field trial and confirm the Sunglider’s enormous potential. Going forward, we’ll continue to challenge ourselves to achieve further performance enhancements, and realize long-duration flights and optical wireless communications. Building on the achievements from this field trial, we’ll accelerate our efforts towards commercializing HAPS.”