Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Now, I'd love for you to share a little bit too about the AW 609 and your work on that project, because that's kind of a. There's a whole new category of aircraft that's coming into, you know, powered lift. And you guys are definitely right in the heart of that conversation.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the 609, if you like, represents also the other side of the other angles of innovation. It is when you pay the price of being the first.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: So we've been working with the FAA and also with the development phase for years and years to make it work and in the meantime, also to understand which were the key factors that make that vehicle. If you want a game changer.
Welcome to Hangar X Studios, where former fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
Our guests include aviat experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types.
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[00:01:15] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to the Hangar X Studios podcast. And we are live at verticon. And this is a place where we are interviewing disruptors and innovators and thought leaders in vertical lift and, and powered lift. And I'm really excited today because we have Mateo Ragazian from Leonardo Matteo. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background because I'm very familiar with Leonardo and what you guys do. Incredible aircraft. We have people that have been on the podcast who love flying your machines and maintaining them, distributing them, using them for life saving missions for commercial applications. But I'd love to hear a little bit maybe about yourself and your background.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So I, I've been with Leonardo, not planning for it for 30 years actually.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: 30 years?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah. This year is going to be 30.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Okay. That's a career.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: That's a career. I must confess, I did not plan for that, but it happened.
So basically, I've been the chief project Engineer of the 119, the koala. Then we moved, I moved to become the chief project engineer for the 139. So 10 years in the 139, bringing the aircraft to maturity up to the first million hours accrued in service.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Then I moved to the 189 and I did the chief project engineer for the 189. And then after that I simply said, okay, times to change, please.
So I became head of airworthiness in the EASA approved design organization in Italy.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: And thereafter I've been appointed director of engineering and in the last two years, we basically put innovation together with engineering as a single community because we wanted to have a heavy cross fertilization and it was not enough at that time. So we decided to do this experiment, not to keep it separate. So that's what I am now. So head of engineering and innovation in the Leonardo Helicopter division.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And could you share what innovation means to you and how do you, how would you as an organization know that you're actually being innovative?
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Well, I think it's fair to say we're talking about road mapping, not at product level, but at technology and process level.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: So basically we sketch on a nearly basis roadmaps on different streams, technology driven. Clearly. And every year we do the exercise of what could be the application, what is maturity level, and so on to products.
So we basically make a link between the technology roadmaps, products portfolio and strategy. Okay. That's what we do. So we are a heavy stimulus to the community to basically think about what's going to happen, what's going to be worth to be having five years from now or 20 years from now. Okay.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: So we keep doing the exercise on an early basis. When I talk about technology, same thing happens on processes. We basically challenge the process we have throughout the division.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: So not just trying to continuously improve.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Them or break them and rebuild them, it's challenge. So when you challenge the recipe could be break it and disrupt it, or it could be instead evolve it.
But you need to keep challenge the status quo. That's what we do on a daily basis.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Now, as you brought innovation intentionally into the engineering team, is there anything you noticed or learned doing that?
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yeah, the thing we learned was that the thing works only if you have kind of a connection points.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: So you need to have an organization and roles that basically force the engineering community to be fertilized by the innovation community.
And sometimes you want to shift roles on purpose. So you make basically an innovator become part of an execution team, a project team, and vice versa to close the loop.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: What does that look like practically? That's kind of fascinating concept.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: It's basically that you have in every single department a guy that is devoted to get sure that the budget for innovation is executed within that department and vice versa, it feeds back to the roadmaping.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: So imagine that you have a person that is devoted just to that over each department. Okay. That's the baseline of the concept. And then on periodic meetings you basically you may decide that if you launch a project, an innovator can become part of the project in order to See what is the real execution? Okay.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: So it's changing and then reinforcing a way of thinking. Absolutely, yeah. And now with that, what are the innovations you think have come out of this kind of this marriage of the two and these connecting points that you're. That we might be seeing in what's happening at Leonardo?
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Essentially what we found was that on an early basis we changed completely the picture. For example, who were asking the same question? One year ago I would have taught, I would told about propulsion, electrification and for example, material. Okay. Materials, new materials, advanced materials and things like that. This year, actually, we shifted in the last eight months the paradigm towards automation and autonomy.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Because we realized that on our roadmaps in terms of products and strategy, autonomy was taking a specific weight. It was 10 times higher than it was one year ago. So we launched into that.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: What was 10 times? What made it 10 times higher? As far as the importance.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Importance. We've been, for example, testing and demoing automation, exercise, imagine crew and crew teaming. We've been doing small drones. So when I say small, I'm saying 500 pounds.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Not, not more than okay. And all of a sudden, in not more than 12 months, we were no longer shy to think about an, an autonomous vehicle that was 3 tons, which we are. For example, the one that we're doing for the Royal Navy is Proteus and another one as a demo that we're doing for the Marines, that is actually a 139 based solution. It's 7 tons. So in one year it was kind of normal to talk about autonomous vehicles. Regardless of the size. It was no longer a drone thing. Okay. It's a real actually autonomy proposition. Scalable.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Now I'd love for you to share a little bit too about the AW609 and your work on that project, because that's kind of of a. There's a whole new category of aircraft that's coming into, you know, powered lift. And you guys are definitely right in the heart of that conversation.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah. The, the 609, if you like, represents also the other side of the, the other angles of innovation. It is when you pay the price of being the first.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: So we've been working with the FAA and also with the development phase for years and years to make it work and in the meantime also to understand which were the key factors and make that vehicle, if you want a game changer. Okay.
By doing so. I must confess that I'm one of the few people that talk good about the FAA because the FAA attitude changed. Completely in the last year and something.
Now we understand, if you like, that the FAA wants to have a success as we want.
So they've been very cooperative with us. So we've been accruing a lot of milestones. The last one was two weeks ago we got the TIA approval for the starting of the flights. And the TIA flights started with the FM board last week. Oh, they did, they did. So, so now we are, now we, we see the light at the end of the tunnel.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, for people that might not know, but give us kind of a status update of where the, where that is right now and what does the roadmap certification look like at this point?
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Imagine you have two aircraft flying in the States, in Philly, out of Northeast Philly Airport that are the main, if you want assets that we, you be using for the search. And in Italy we have one.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Okay. So we got three aircraft based program.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: So you're working with EASA and FAA kind of simultaneously doing this.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: It's not simultaneous. We kept them hot. Okay. Because we don't want to do things to ice, of course, and we didn't want YASA to be asking for requirements. So we're completely on their own. So. So they are in sync but sequential anyway because we would not have the capability to take the burden of both counterparts at the same time. So we wanted to basically have FAA running the show and getting sure that EASA is actually on board as well, sequentially. So they will come after the FAA we've been allowing in accordance with, he has on board already in some familiarization flights in Italy.
So actually we're keeping both regulators on board on that.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: That's wonderful. So, you know, this year ahead, we're at the beginning of 25. What are some of the big, you know, engineering challenges or problems you guys are need to solve over the next, you know, 12 months.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: If you look at the old system testing, component testing and so on, they're kind of all over. Okay. That we already accomplished and completed many, many of them. The we still have a lot of component testing at suppliers that is actually very many running qualification tests and the rest is raking up enough flying hours. Just to give you an idea, last week ECRA number four in Italy was doing an average of three to four flights a day, you know, to basically run, run to, to do recertification flights. So the big, the big effort is to get sure that we do the TA flights and we keep the momentum running TA flights both in the States and then some could be also done In Italy.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: So. And with Leonardo's work in, you know, autonomy and flight control systems and your expertise and helicopters, how has that helped you with the flight control laws and Systems for the 609?
[00:12:15] Speaker B: It's been. If you want a new religion.
What I say is if you think about the way you do flight control system on helicopters, you have a basic balanced aircraft design without the need of flight control system system per se. And then you add capabilities through the flight control system. That's normally the way. So authority of the system, requirements on the system architecture and so on, if you like, can be less demanding.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: If you think about a fast rotorcraft, whatever architecture the fly by wire is part of, inherent envelope protection is inherent in the basic aircraft design. So architecture, system integrity, failure cases, performance of these single components and so on, that's top notch. It's not comparable. And you need to understand it from day one when you develop the aircraft. It's not an add on. Okay.
That's why we developed a full team that is able to speak that language, which was actually, I can say we had already the competence capabilities, but the criteria. We had to change the criteria of the system. Yeah, that's what was the case.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Wow. That's, you know, in that, you know, I'm just thinking for an airplane like that. Right. There's. I'm familiar with the F35B. I have some good friends flying. It has actually eight takeoff and landing modes. I'm guessing yours is simplified. Right. You probably have vertical, short, possibly conventional. I don't know what, what are, you know, thinking from a pilot perspective? How are you thinking about it?
[00:14:04] Speaker B: The, the thing that tilt rotors allow you to do is that you can play like in helicopters or vertical and. Or cat A, that kind of stuff with that. Okay. So you can do a cat B, cate, a normal takeoff, vertical, or if you want different procedures and so on, you can do that. But the beauty of the short takeoff and landing is that you can basically have a performance increase in terms of payload.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: Very significant in a super small and short Runway. And because the, the props, the prop rotors so much able to energize the wing.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: That you reach 40 knots in quickly. Absolutely.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Is that the, is that the rotate.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: 40 knots you go, you basically are up in the air.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: You don't feel even after you bubble up in the air, you know. So basically. So it's not a typical super energized takeoff. It's natural.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Was that 300ft?
[00:14:59] Speaker B: It's 300ft, yes. 300ft, kind of.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: And then you'll be flying.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: And then how about to clear a 50 foot obstacle another couple hundred feet?
[00:15:08] Speaker B: The ramp is very steep.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: It's shorter than 200 more. Okay.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: And I'm guessing a 50% increase in payload just by doing that.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: No, we, we basically tested just £500 more.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Okay. Because that's what we needed.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: We, we can explore to increase in that area, but we want to do it later.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Okay. We know we can do that.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And how are you guys looking, you know, in the future? Are you guys looking at hybrid, electric, electrified? What is kind of the roadmap for the power plants you're looking at?
[00:15:39] Speaker B: So we've been, we've been playing with electrification, especially also on the hybrid. We went public in 2021. Okay. That we were doing that kind of exercise. And we've been spending years on different concepts.
We take a product and we basically make the hybrid version of the product through studies, simulation and so on. We did a lot of simulation testing with pilots as well. You know, to understand if our comps was actually making an operational advantage. We saw the weaknesses and the advantages. We discussed with the regulators to get sure that the environmental, the operational requirements and environment was ready or what has to be changed to make it ready for the product.
Surprisingly, it was not that much. We need to change to make it work.
The technology instead. Today we know we can. It's feasible. Okay. We're still discussing internally about the real competitive advantage that this can give versus a conventional solution. Imagine that your. Your comparison point is not a single aircraft, a single engine. It's a twin engine.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Okay. So you basically say, how better is the hybrid versus a twin?
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Are you a single or twin in the 609?
[00:17:06] Speaker B: In the 609, we are twin, but the hybrid propulsion we are doing is on the conventional architecture. So we started from the 09.
We also have some studies on something else. But basically you take a conventional choice chopper and you basically see what is the advantage if you don't go twin.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: And we are more, if you want, efficient by going single. I call it the one and a half engine, essentially.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah. That's a good way to think about it. Yeah.
Now, how has the market been receiving the 609? Now you're making progress. You kind of got some momentum behind you.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: The thing that is actually explaining better what is the reaction is, if you remember when the iPad was introduced, people were cautious and why do I need that kind of thing?
[00:17:53] Speaker A: It's just a big iPhone.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Right. It's a big iPhone. And what happened was that after a while, people, everybody had an iPad.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: So. And you cannot make it do without it as you're doing. So the 609, with true demos within summer, some specific demos. And I was having a lot of fun by seeing the faces of the people deboarding the aircraft thereafter. You know, and when you're on board, you need to tell people, hey, you know, you're flying at 220 knots, by the way. You need to tell people because they don't perceive it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like it.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: And it's 100 knots faster than in a helicopter.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: If you think about a helicopter. Well, you know, when you're going fast.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yes, you do.
There's a lot of energy on it.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Helicopter, you can feel it.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: So that's the kind of thing.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: It feels faster than 120 just because of how much energy there is.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Absolutely, it does. So with the 609, we got people that.
I call them converts, you know, because they basically get out of the aircraft and are super happy and they say, okay, now I know what you mean.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: No, this is just a guess, but I'm guessing with that large rotor, when. When you're in forward flight, it's actually going to be lower rpm, so it's kind of. It's probably smoother. Is that fair? It is quieter and smoother.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: No, it's what it does automatically, basically, when you go airplane mode after the transition.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: The RPM goes down.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Essentially you. You feel it, you know, because you hear it going down. And the. The ride comfort is absolutely.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Now, what do you think your primary markets will be as this rolls out?
[00:19:32] Speaker B: We basically started with utility in general. There are a lot of cases where you need to have a point A to point B connection, but point B is beyond 400 nautical miles or beyond. Something that makes sense for a helicopter or it takes too long. For example, we had cases like a case where in Borneo you got a thousand kilometers of jungle. You cannot do even emergency landings on it. And a case of transportation could not be done. Okay. So that enables that kind of missions. Or the other bit was logistics.
It sounds easy. They're not, because you need to have logistics in the middle of the sea, for example, or to an island that doesn't have an airport, but it's too far away. Okay.
So there are many instances where today you don't have a solution to the problem.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Too far for a helicopter. No place to land an airplane.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Exactly. So the combination of, if you like, range and time with a specific payload, that today you don't know how to do it. You know, the tilt rotor allows you to do that.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: What do you think your payload will be with full fuel?
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Well, it's actually an athlete meter. Okay, so that's what it is.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's. That's pretty good. Probably at least £2,000.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's £2,000. Yes.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Wonderful.
My goodness. Well, I'd love to have you back on the podcast, especially as you guys hit. What's your next milestone for you guys that you guys will be celebrating as.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: A team for innovation or for.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Well, how about both innovation and the 609.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: We need to have the first flight of next gen tilt toro to the demonstrator.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: We need to do the first flight of produce.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Okay. So fully autonomous. Those are the two things I want to celebrate.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: I'm gonna get drunk this year.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: You're gonna get drunk.
Okay. Good. Wine or wine Bourbon. Okay. Yes. Well, you are Italian, so lots of good wine. Absolutely, yes. I just got back from a trip to Florence. It was in my first time there. It was incredible. So, well, just as we wrap up, just what final thoughts do you have? We're going to be sharing this with a large audience. You can share it with your team. What's your kind of final encouragement as we're all kind of stepping into some breakthroughs that are happening?
[00:21:47] Speaker B: I think that the best thing for the community, I call it community, because vertical is a community, is that you can sense the energy.
Technologies enable energy. And it's not only technology. It's people thinking about they can do things that up to some time ago, they were not even thinking they can even conceive. Okay. So the energy is there.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: It's up to us to basically make it captured and transform in real things.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Yeah. I love that the energy is being captured. It's now tangible. Right. New possibilities have emerged. And we have creative, energetic, entrepreneurial people that are actually stepping into places they didn't even think they'd step into even a few years ago.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: AI and so on. Wonderful things. But I want to touch things.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Right? Yes, exactly. Well, Matteo Grazio, thank you.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: John.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Yes. Thank you so much for everything. You do too, and for being here. And I look forward to our next conversation.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Thank you for hosting me.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yes.
