The commercial variant of the helicopter — the Sikorsky Black Hawk S-70 — which has a maximum gross weight (GW) of 22,000 lb, can achieve a maximum speed of 163 knots (302 km/hr or 187 mph).

In particular, one task of the project was to demonstrate Sikorsky Innovations, the company's rapid prototyping group, to go from preliminary design to untethered flight of the protoype in a ...