With its sleek design and groundbreaking aerodynamics, the Airbus RACER isn’t just a prototype—it’s a symbol of Europe’s commitment to clean aviation.

Brice Makinadjian and Stephane Deport, both engineers at Airbus Helicopters, looked on proudly as a sleek blue-and-white helicopter zipped over the crowds at the Paris Airshow in June 2025.

Slicing through the air was the Airbus RACER (Rapid and Cost-Effective Rotorcraft), an advanced prototype designed to be faster, quieter and more fuel-efficient than conventional helicopters.

This high-speed, low-emission rotorcraft is redefining helicopter flight by blending the speed of an airplane with the agility of a rotorcraft—all while slashing CO₂ emissions by approximately 25% compared to a conventional helicopter of the same weight category.

How it started: A European team effort

The RACER’s roots go back to the EU’s Clean Sky 2 program (2014–2024), the largest research program for aviation ever launched in Europe.

This public-private collaboration between the European Commission and the European aeronautics industry funded the development of innovative, cutting-edge technologies to reduce the aeronautics sector’s environmental impact.

The support provided under Clean Sky 2 made it possible for the various components of the RACER—such as aerodynamics, engine integration and rotor systems—to be incrementally refined before being tested together in the demonstrator built by Airbus, a leading European aerospace company.

“This partnership has been fundamental,” said Makinadjian. “We could not have done this without European collaboration and support.”

The development of the prototype has involved over 40 European companies and research organizations from 13 countries. “We have access to the best of Europe,” said Makinadjian. “It is the European spirit at its finest.”

Cleaner future for European skies

The RACER is also part of Europe’s mission to make flying greener. Under the European Green Deal, the EU has pledged to become climate neutral by 2050, and aviation is no exception.

The EU’s Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy sets the goal of having zero-emission aircraft ready for market by 2035. This would mark a major step toward climate-neutral aviation and a cleaner future for European skies.

Why does this matter? As Axel Krein, executive director at the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking (2025–2035)—Clean Sky 2’s successor—pointed out, aviation is a powerhouse for Europe’s economy. It supports 13.5 million jobs and contributes over €1 trillion to the European economy. That is 3.6% of all jobs and 4.4% of Europe’s GDP.

For Krein, the importance of the RACER demonstrator for Europe is evident. Such new designs will help secure Europe’s aerospace leadership in the future.

“Currently, Europe has a market share of 58% of new civil aircraft worldwide, so Europe’s aviation leadership is strong. But it is not guaranteed,” he said. “Global competition and geopolitical shifts are threatening this leadership.”

Stealth and speed

After over 10 years in development, the new technologies being showcased in the RACER prototype could become an essential part of helicopter design over the coming decade.

The RACER’s sleek aerodynamic design and side-mounted lateral rotors give it a cruising speed of over 440 km/h—over 50% faster than regular helicopters.

One of the factors is the reduced air and wind resistance, or drag, as it moves through the air. This is 2.5 times lower than in other helicopters of the same weight.

“We have a lower drag than the smallest helicopters on the market today,” said Makinadjian.

The main rotor was redesigned, reducing its speed, to increase stability. At the same time, two wings were added at the sides with lateral rotors to provide forward thrust.

This means that the RACER can fly like an airplane in certain flight phases, using its wings and lateral rotors to glide forward, making it effectively a cross between a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft.

Eco-mode

The innovative Eco Mode system is another standout feature, similar to the start-stop function in modern cars, that will soon be tested on the RACER. Developed by Safran, the Eco Mode involves putting one of the two engines on standby during cruise flight, allowing the other to operate at a more optimal and energy-efficient power setting.

This mode of operation not only reduces CO₂ emissions and fuel consumption by around 15%, but also increases the distance that can be covered by the helicopter.

“We can fly at 350 km/h on only one engine,” said Deport. “But we also need to be able to restart the other engine instantly to keep it safe.”

Overall, the improved aerodynamics and innovative design allow the RACER to use 25% less fuel than slower, conventional helicopters. As the team gears up to begin testing the Eco Mode feature, they expect to achieve even more fuel savings.

In addition to commercial transport, the developers predict that the RACER could be ideal for emergency medical services and search and rescue operations because of its speed and efficiency.

“Emergency response helicopters need to be fast and noise reduction is key to perform operations close to inhabited areas,” said Makinadjian.

From cars to choppers

A total of 40 partners collaborated on the creation of the RACER. One unexpected partner in the RACER’s journey was KLK Motorsport, an SME from Germany specialized in high-performance mechanical engineering, lightweight structures and advanced composite materials.

Better known for its expertise in car racing rather than aerospace, KLK co-developed the RACER’s canopy—the sleek, enclosure over the cockpit that needs to handle airflow efficiently to optimize aerodynamics.

Their involvement highlights one of the RACER’s greatest strengths: the wide collaboration that went into its development, which brought in the expertise of major industry players, but also specialized SMEs and leading research organizations.

“Working with people outside aerospace is invigorating,” said Makinadjian. “The creation of new parts for car racing moves at lightning speed. When we told them they had five years to develop a ‘very innovative and light’ canopy, they were surprised,” he laughed. “In racing, everything needs to be delivered yesterday.”

Flying into the future

The RACER prototype took to the skies for the first time in April 2024. More than a year on, it has logged around 35 hours of flight time, but there is plenty more testing ahead.

Despite their deep involvement in the design, engineers Makinadjian and Deport have yet to fly in the RACER themselves. “Only eight people, besides the test pilots, have been able to,” said Makinadjian. “We’re still on the waiting list.”

Tests continue at the Airbus Helicopters’ headquarters in Marignane, near Marseille in southern France. Early results are encouraging. But Makinadjian and Deport are still working hard to finetune the technical details. For them, this is just the start.

What excites them most is simply being part of the journey. “If you’re an aerospace engineer, this kind of project only comes along once in a lifetime,” said Makinadjian. “To go from nothing to seeing your design take flight—it’s magical.”

As the RACER continues its test flights, it is not just pushing the boundaries of rotorcraft speed—it is charting the course for a new era of more fuel-efficient, smarter aviation in Europe.

This article was originally published in Horizon the EU Research and Innovation Magazine.

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated by the day, UC Riverside researchers are making computing safer thanks to research that targets some of the internet’s most pressing security challenges.

UCR computer science and engineering students and faculty in the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering are developing tools to expose hidden vulnerabilities, protect private data, and strengthen the digital defenses that safeguard everything from personal communications to national infrastructure.

Their work is on the forefront of cybersecurity innovation—and underscores the critical role of federal investment in higher education research.

“Cybersecurity impacts every aspect of our lives, from personal privacy to national security. At UC Riverside, with support from federal grants, we’re training the next generation of computer scientists and engineers who are already making the internet and IT systems safer for everyone,” said Amit Roy-Chowdhury, a Bourns professor and co-director of the UC Riverside Artificial Intelligence Research and Education (RAISE) Institute.

Here are examples of computer security innovations published and presented at conferences this year:

Protecting data in AI learning

As artificial intelligence spreads into health care, finance, and government, privacy is paramount. But UCR graduate student Hasin Us Sami discovered that even methods designed to keep sensitive information safe can be compromised.

His paper, “Gradient Inversion Attacks on Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning”, posted to the arXiv preprint server, shows that adversaries can reconstruct private images from a training process called federated learning that was thought to be safer. Federated learning lets users train AI models on their own devices without sharing raw data.

For example, several hospitals may want to team up to develop AI models that detect diseases from patient tissue image scans. The research found that attackers could reverse-engineer data from the information that is shared and demonstrated how malicious servers could retrieve private images during training from state-of-the-art learning architectures, underscoring the urgent need for stronger defenses. The work was recognized at the 2025 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, one of the top gatherings of AI researchers.

His paper was co-authored by graduate student Swapneel Sen, professors Amit K. Roy-Chowdhury and Srikanth V. Krishnamurthy, and assistant professor Basak Guler.

Unmasking firewall weaknesses

Research by graduate student Qing Deng focused on firewalls that millions rely on for protection. In the paper “Beyond the Horizon: Uncovering Hosts and Services Behind Misconfigured Firewalls,” published in the 2025 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), Deng and colleagues revealed that small configuration mistakes could open the door to cyber intruders.

By scanning the internet for unusual access points, Deng uncovered more than 2 million hidden services exposed by misconfigured firewalls—ranging from outdated servers to vulnerable home routers. These flaws, though overlooked for years, create what the team calls an “expanded observable internet,” a larger attack surface than security experts previously realized. The paper was co-authored by graduate students Juefei Pu, Zhaoweo Tan, and professors Zhiyun Qian and Srikanth V. Krishnamurthy.

Detecting invisible network flaws

For doctoral student Keyu Man, the threat of invisible “side-channel” attacks is a high priority. These attacks exploit subtle quirks in network protocols to allow hackers to hijack connections in a commonly used kind of server.

Known as “domain name system” servers, these computers translate human-friendly domain names into machine-readable IP addresses, allowing devices to find and connect to the right server.

Man co-authored the paper “SCAD: Towards a Universal and Automated Network Side-Channel Vulnerability Detection,” also published in the 2025 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), which introduces a tool called Side-ChAnnel Detector, or SCAD, to automatically uncover weaknesses in widely used operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD. Unlike previous methods that required weeks of painstaking manual work, SCAD can identify flaws in a single day of analysis.

Man’s research revealed 14 vulnerabilities—seven previously unknown—that could have been exploited for devastating cyberattacks. By automating the process, SCAD could change how industry protects critical online infrastructure.

The co-authors of this study include graduate students Zhongjie Wang, Yu Hao, Shenghan Zheng, Xin’an Zhou, Yue Cao, and professor Zhiyun Qian.

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) is conducting high-level engagement with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and the wider British automotive industry as car production remains suspended at JLR’s facilities following a cyber attack.

DBT representatives today (Friday 19 September) held an extraordinary meeting with the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) Automotive Components Section amid the ongoing disruption to the wider supply chain in the UK.

During talks, officials heard about some of the challenges the sector is currently facing thanks to the sudden shutdown at JLR. The Tata-owned carmaker produced over 300,000 vehicles in 2024 and employs over 30,000 people, so is a cornerstone of the UK’s automotive industry.

The DBT send it was working to understand the impact to the supply chain, and that the meeting had allowed it to listen directly and understand the challenges and concerns JLR’s suppliers are facing.

Computer Weekly understands that many of these suppliers have had to shut down their own assembly lines since they cannot now send their finished products to JLR, and some are facing the prospect of lay-offs as a result.

“We know this is a worrying time for those affected, and although Jaguar Land Rover are taking the lead on support for their own supply chain, our cyber experts continue to support them to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” said minister for industry Chris McDonald.

McDonald additionally met with West Midlands mayor Richard Parker on Thursday 18 September to discuss the impact of the JLR shutdown on the region.

On 17 September, trade union Unite urged the government to consider setting up a furlough scheme – similar to the nationwide scheme put in place for many sectors during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 – to preserve the jobs of an estimated 200,000 people.

“Workers in the JLR supply chain must not be made to pay the price for the cyber attack,” said Unite general secretary Sharon Graham. “It is the government’s responsibility to protect jobs and industries that are a vital part of the economy.”

Unite has advised some of the affected workers that they may be able to apply for Universal Credit.

JLR production is currently scheduled to resume on 24 September, but according to the BBC, Unite believes there is “zero chance” of this happening.