A gliding champion with a $100,000 debt

Paul MacCready was a born inventor from New Haven who won a national model-aircraft contest at 15 and, in 1956, became the first American to win the World Soaring Championship. He founded AeroVironment in 1971. A few years later he guaranteed a business loan for a friend; the business failed and left him owing 100,000 dollars. That debt gave him the push to try for the Kremer prize, 50,000 pounds for the first controlled human-powered flight, which had gone unclaimed for 18 years.

Pedalling across the Channel

With Peter Lissaman, MacCready built the Gossamer Condor, a huge, delicate, slow-flying machine. In August 1977 it stayed up for seven minutes and flew the required figure-of-eight course, winning the first Kremer prize. Kremer then offered 100,000 pounds for the first human-powered crossing of the English Channel. In 1979 the Gossamer Albatross, pedalled by the cyclist and pilot Bryan Allen, flew 23 miles from England to France, then the largest prize in aviation history. Both aircraft are in the National Air and Space Museum. The Solar Challenger then flew 163 miles from Paris to England on sunlight alone.

Sun-powered wings and atmospheric satellites

Electric and solar flight became the company’s speciality, sometimes in unexpected places. In the 1980s the CIA sponsored HALSOL, a solar-powered high-altitude drone, which became NASA’s Pathfinder; its descendants Centurion and Helios followed, and Helios set a world altitude record of 96,863 feet. AeroVironment also built the Sunraycer, which won the first world solar car race in Australia in 1987 by two days, and the GM Impact electric car prototype. Its subsidiary Skytower tested using high-flying drones as atmospheric satellites, and it is a minority partner in SoftBank’s HAPSMobile.

The Raven goes to war

AeroVironment’s fortune, though, came from very small military drones. The RQ-11 Raven, a hand-launched aircraft weighing 1.9 kg, became the most widely adopted UAV system in the world, with more than 19,000 airframes shipped by early 2012. It was joined by the Wasp, chosen by the US Air Force in 2007, the Puma, the Dragon Eye and the Pointer. By fiscal 2025 annual revenue had reached 820.6 million dollars. In June 2021 the company moved its headquarters from Simi Valley in California, where it had 746 of its 915 staff, to Arlington, Virginia, to be near its customers in Washington.

Switchblade, Ukraine and lasers

The Switchblade, a tube-launched loitering munition that the US Army classes as a direct-fire weapon rather than a drone, made AeroVironment a household name in 2022 when the United States sent more than 700 Switchblade 300s to Ukraine; the anti-armour Switchblade 600 followed into combat in 2023. China placed the company under sanctions in January 2024 over arms sales to Taiwan. In May 2025 AeroVironment completed the purchase of BlueHalo for about 4.1 billion dollars in stock, adding counter-drone, space and laser weapons; its LOCUST laser shot down drones from the carrier USS George H.W. Bush in October 2025. MacCready did not live to see it: he died in August 2007.

Factories

• Ventura County operations · Simi Valley and Moorpark, California — 746 of 915 employees in 2021

People

• Paul B. MacCready Jr. · founder and chairman — World Soaring Champion 1956; died August 2007
• Peter Lissaman · aerodynamicist — Co-designer of the Gossamer Condor
• Bryan Allen · pilot — Pedalled the Gossamer Albatross across the Channel, 1979
• Wahid Nawabi · chairman, president and chief executive

Records and firsts

• Gossamer Condor: first Kremer prize for controlled human-powered flight, August 1977
• Gossamer Albatross: first human-powered crossing of the English Channel, 1979
• Helios Prototype: altitude record of 96,863 ft (29,524 m)
• Sunraycer: won the first world solar car race, Australia, 1987
• RQ-11 Raven: most widely adopted UAV system in the world by 2012