A Fort Worth-based defense giant will build a new prototype military aircraft with a mysterious-sounding name.
Bell was awarded a contract for the X-plane, a Speed and Runway Independent Technologies, or SPRINT, project that sounds like it could be the aircraft for a superhero or covert government team. The contract was awarded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Bell will design and build the SPRINT X-plane demonstrator, an aircraft with folding wings and hovering capabilities that is intended to fly at 400 to 450 knots. The flight test program seeks to validate technology that can be scaled to different sizes of military aircraft, the defense agency said…