Sikorsky’s HEX/VTOL (hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing) technology demonstration aircraft could fly as early as 2027. (Image and photos Sikorsky/Lockheed Martin)


OEM offers both legacy product improvement and out-of-the-box thinking.


By Mark Huber “W


E RUN LIKE A START-UP,” says Igor Cherepinsky, director of Sikorsky’s Innovations. Sikorsky formed Innovations in 2013 as an


advanced concepts lab to address what the company saw as the three main challenges of vertical flight: speed, autonomy, and intelligence. “When we recruit, we try to find people … who like


working on aviation and vertical lift but are also open to working on other things,” says Cherepinsky. “I can go from wearing a suit and briefing vice presidents on what we are doing, to putting on jeans and going to the hangar and working on control systems, writing code, or designing hardware. That’s the neat part of it. We try and find people like that who can do everything—soft- ware engineers doing demos, driving ground stations, developing code. You name it, we do it.” While recruits have solid technical backgrounds,


Innovations seeks talent from a variety of sources, including leading engineering schools and parent company Lockheed Martin, as well as peo- ple who are interested in working on “cool problems.” The core staff of Sikorsky Innovations numbers around 60, but they are aug-


mented by people from the larger Sikorsky enterprise as needed. Over the past year, 200 to 300 people worked on Innovations’ current crop of projects— programs that hold the keys to the company’s future. The day-to-day feel in Innovations is informal but


intense, almost like one would find in Silicon Valley. Engineers—some in T-shirts—work collaboratively with


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