Won on debut

Swift began on the racetrack. Founded in 1983 as Swift Racing Cars by David Bruns, Alex Cross, R. K. Smith and Paul White, it built the DB-1 Formula Ford, which won the SCCA national championship in its very first race. More than 100 were sold within 18 months. In 1991 the firm was bought by Hiro Matsushita, a former IndyCar driver and grandson of Panasonic founder Konosuke Matsushita, who renamed it Swift Engineering and took it into CART, where Swift chassis scored four wins.

From IndyCar to airframes

From 1997 the company turned its composites skills to aerospace, working for Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky and NASA. In 2002 it delivered the Killer Bee blended-wing UAV, later sold to Northrop Grumman as the Bat. In 2007 Swift built the prototype Eclipse 400 single-engine jet under contract, in secrecy at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility; it flew on 2 July 2007. From 2015 it built a large part of the airframe of the Sikorsky–Boeing SB-1 Defiant.

The drone that touched 55,904 feet

Its own aircraft are drones. The Swift020, an electric VTOL machine that takes off like a quadcopter and cruises on a 4-metre wing, flew fully autonomously in Kobe, Japan, on 21 July 2018, and was commercialised as the Swift Crane. The solar-electric Swift Ultra Long Endurance (SULE) high-altitude drone first flew from Spaceport America in 2020 and on 29–30 September 2024 reached 55,904 feet during a 24-hour flight.

אֲנָשִׁים

• Hiro Matsushita · chairman and CEO — Former racing driver; bought Swift in 1991
• David Bruns · co-founder and designer — Designed the DB-1 Formula Ford

שיאים וראשונות

• SULE reached 55,904 ft above mean sea level on a 24-hour flight from Spaceport America, 29–30 September 2024