 A new research agreement between the ride-sharing company Uber and the United States Army may result in quieter, unmanned aircraft for the future force. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has aeronautical engineers and scientists working to solve some of the toughest technology challenges in delivering the rotorcraft of tomorrow. During a technical summit in Los Angeles May 8, Uber announced it has signed a cooperative research and development agreement with the Army to advance technologies supporting future vertical lift. The research that we will collaborate with Uber to do will actually deliver unprecedented capability for quieter rotor systems in a unique configuration. This objective aligns with the Army modernization priorities. One of those six modernization priorities is for future vertical lift and the emphasis within future vertical lift is toward future rotorcraft or helicopters but also a future fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs commonly known as drones. Army officials said their work on the future fleet of unmanned aerial systems will include the ability to give the soldier of the future silent operations. We have extensive experience in rotorcraft aeromechanics and rotorcraft aeromechanics by definition is very multidisciplinary field. It requires expertise in different technical areas and we have such a group. Uber engineers met the Army researchers at a conference in 2017 and soon after discussions began about a potential collaboration. We have a 32 year veteran of NASA Mark Moore who's helping to design a lot of these aircraft. So it was a pretty natural partnership for us to connect with U.S. Army research and start looking into rotor technology. The key takeaway here is that the technology that's being developed has direct applications in both urban air mobility in the private sector as well as military applications. The laboratory aggressively seeks out private public partnerships with academia and industry to reach its research goals. So I'm really confident because we have willing partners on either side with Uber with their objective for urban transportation or the air taxi as they call it and the Army with its objective for silent operation as a capability for the future unmanned aerial vehicle fleet for the soldier. And so because Uber is aware of the subject matter expertise that resides in RDECOM and we are able to deliver that through a long standing relationship with partners in our ARL South regional extended site. The combination of elements there really give me great confidence that good will come of this. Building an ecosystem with industry and academia will allow for sharing resources resulting in science and technology solutions for soldiers. This grader is really captured the spirit of open campus. In the sense here we have a commercial partner who have certain requirements or certain needs of advancing technology for air taxi applications. And we have on Army side we have needs to advance S&T for unmanned air systems. Challenges include making unmanned aircraft systems fly longer, faster and carry higher payloads. I'm very excited for the partnership that's coming about because it really starts to get toward the strategy of having industry, an aggressive engagement with industry around very cutting edge research that may be in its early stages but will allow us to move this into an industrial ecosystem where it can make its way to the soldier.