HALO Aerotech is an Adelaide based startup developing a new class of jet-based drone propulsion capability to move heavy payloads through complex environments. Led by its founder, James Kim, who’s a second time deep-tech founder, aerospace engineer, and has spent the last decade developing some of the world’s smallest microturbine engines. HALO Aerotech’s vision is to transform how people and goods move through complex environments, making aerial mobility accessible, practical, and efficient.
In Defence, forward deployed soldiers typically carry around 3 days of essential supplies (i.e. food, water, ammo, medical supplies) before requiring resupply, however as seen in Ukraine, frontline positions can be cut-off from conventional resupply (i.e. ground/road based logistics) for up to 90-120 days. In these situations, the only means of keeping these soldiers alive is resupply via aerial drones, however today’s electric drones, which can hover and access these contested locations, have extremely limited payload/endurance/range due to battery energy density limitations, with payload capped at typically 30-70kg max. This mean they’re unable to adequately sustain frontline units let alone move more meaningful payloads such as getting the wounded out.
HALO Aerotech is developing a proprietary jet-propulsion system and aerial drone architecture that’s designed to move anywhere from 30-200kg in a compact and hover-capable system to move meaningful payloads through the most complex of environments. This is achieved by leveraging microturbines (micro-jet engines) that can run on almost any type of fuel to produce extremely high thrust-to-weight ratios, resulting in roughly 10x more useable energy per kg than battery electric systems, which enables up to roughly 5x longer flight endurance. Most importantly, our proprietary propulsion invention solves the key barriers that’s made micro-jet engines impractical for Defence and hover operations due to their extremely poor noise and hover efficiencies. When combined with our proprietary drone platform architecture, we expect to be able to achieve up to 10x smaller drone size than electric multirotor drones of equivalent payload. Lastly, our propulsion systems have no exposed rotating blades and can be manufactured almost entirely in Australia without reliance on Chinese electric drone motor components. This allows for a new autonomous capability that can not only deliver meaningful supplies to the frontline when other options are nonviable, but it could even evacuate wounded soldiers from the frontline without exposing additional personnel in crewed vehicles. Although our initial use-case has been identified as Defence frontline resupply, our propulsion and drone technology can be applied to several other markets including industrial cargo and inspection, as well as urban aerial mobility.
Estimated $11B TAM by 2030 for our relevant subset of VTOL-capable heavy-lift drones in the 30-200kg payload range. Markets include Defence logistics, ISR, and CASEVAC (US, ADF, NATO), industrial inspection and cargo, and urban aerial mobility.
Bring the core team on-board, file initial IP protections, and take us from analytical concept to experimentally validated propulsion demonstrator with the key engineering data needed to unlock subsequent funding rounds as well as initial Defence innovation contracts and trial opportunities.