Vortex Aerospace
Company
A small, founder-led aerospace company. One aircraft, one recipe, and a way of working that lets a handful of people iterate a whole airframe in days.
We did not set out to build the best aircraft at one thing. We set out to build one that is never the weak link.
Vortex Aerospace began with a layout and a conviction. The layout is the canard delta: stable, roomy, efficient, and forgiving of the things a working aircraft is asked to carry. The conviction is that the useful aircraft is the balanced one — the one that takes off short, cruises clean, lands on water when it has to, folds into a trailer, and looks after itself in the air.
Drako is that aircraft. It is full-electric because electric propulsion is simple, quiet and honest about its costs. It is 3D-printed on a composite spine because that is how a small team builds a whole airframe, changes it, and builds it again. It watches its own sky because an aircraft that shares airspace should know what is in it.
We are a founder-led team. We design, print, assemble and test in-house, and we say what we can prove.
The way we work
Everything on Drako is generated from one engineering recipe. There is no drawing that can go stale, no part that lives outside the model. A change to the recipe is a change to the aircraft — and every build is proven before anything is printed.
1
One recipe
The airframe is a program. Wing, fuselage, pylons, pods, gear, floats, lids, fairings, fixings: every part is generated from shared parameters, so the whole aircraft stays consistent when one number moves.
2
Proven on every build
Each build runs automated proofs: clearance sweeps through the full travel of every moving part, fit checks between neighbours, structural and mass checks, and identity checks that nothing changed that was not meant to. A build that fails a proof is not printed.
3
Printed and flown
Parts are printed in engineering polymers on a carbon composite spine with kit foam wing panels, assembled, and put on the demonstrator. What we learn on the aircraft goes back into the recipe — and the next build carries it.
The team
Vortex Aerospace is small by design. A founder-led engineering team covers aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, printing, systems and vision, with the automated recipe and its proofs doing the work that would otherwise need a department.
We are not hiring publicly at this stage. If you build aircraft, print structures, train detectors or operate in the field, and the approach above makes sense to you, write to us.
Work with us
Partners, investors and operators: the programme view, the data pack and the demonstrator schedule are available under NDA. Access to the partner portal is on request.