“The sound profile is why we are so well positioned to [build aircraft] for defense,” Goel said. “If you look at the traditional helicopters that the defense industry uses, they’re very loud and have very noticeable heat signatures. And so that makes helicopters not a great fit for more discrete missions.”
Archer’s Midnight is built with 12 sets of engines and propellers – six in the front, six in the back. That distributed propulsion among smaller rotors that spin slightly slower, rather than a single large main rotor and tail rotor that operate at high speeds, creates much less noise.