Two months ago, at the Texas State Fair, inventor Paul Moller displayed his Skycar, a vertical takeoff-and-landing craft with a cockpit seating four and four nacelles that house eight rotary engines.

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Finally, AgustaWestland surprised the HeliExpo crowd by revealing that it has been secretly testing an electrically powered tiltrotor, mixing the versatility of a vertical takeoff and land helicopter with the speed and range of a fixed-wing aircraft.

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There was a brief thaw in relations when the Cold War ended, because with the Red Navy gone the U.S. Navy needed to highlight its relevance to fighting ashore, but the more common pattern is for the Navy to constantly question the requirement for Marine assets like vertical-takeoff jets and maritime prepositioning ships (which store warfighting supplies in likely areas of conflict).

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