Windracers says Purdue's ULTRA made the first BVLOS flight in Indiana's new drone corridor

TLDR

• Windracers says a Purdue-owned ULTRA flew over 50 miles BVLOS during the Midwest UAS Test Site opening on 29 October.¹
• The aircraft is to be tested for parachute supply drops to flood-affected communities, Windracers says.¹
• IEDC says the site is one of nine FAA-designated test sites and is now accepting members.²

Windracers said on 2 November that a Windracers ULTRA owned by Purdue University was the first autonomous aircraft to complete a beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) flight in the newly created Indiana Drone Corridor of the Midwest UAS Test Site.¹ The "first" is the company's claim. Windracers says the flight covered more than 50 miles of the 200-plus-mile corridor and took place at the corridor's opening event in Terre Haute on 29 October, where Indiana Governor Mike Braun, US Senator Todd Young and US Representative Mark Messmer spoke and watched an autonomous parachute resupply display.¹ It describes the ULTRA as an autonomous aircraft with an aluminium airframe, a 33 ft wingspan and a three-bay cargo drop door, and says Purdue will test it for emergency supply drops by parachute to communities affected by flooding.¹

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) said on 30 October that Governor Braun had launched the Midwest UAS Test Site of Indiana, one of nine UAS test sites designated by the FAA, which operates as a network of testing locations, airspace and technical partners and is now accepting members and supporting flight-test operations.² It is led by the Applied Research Institute (ARI) and the IEDC, with partners including Purdue, Pierce Aerospace, Windracers, the Indiana National Guard and Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane; Terre Haute Regional Airport is one hub and others are to be announced.² Inside INdiana Business dates the launch to Thursday 29 October, and reports that Indiana was selected for the FAA programme in January alongside the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the first additions to the network in nearly a decade, and that testing will draw on military bases, university facilities and farms.³ It quotes ARI chief operating officer Trevor Foughty saying companies can test at several Indiana locations rather than a single facility.³

DroneLife, whose account follows the Windracers announcement, gives the ULTRA's stated range as 2,000 km, payload as 200 kg and endurance as 15 hours, and says the Indiana flight was the aircraft's second BVLOS flight in the United States, after a 670-mile flight in Alaska on 19 August 2026 to carry anti-doping blood samples.⁴ The flight details and the "first" claim therefore rest on Windracers' own release; the IEDC and Inside INdiana Business pieces cover the test site's launch, not the ULTRA flight.¹²³⁴

Why it matters: according to Windracers, a Purdue-owned ULTRA made the first BVLOS flight in the Indiana corridor and will be tested for flood-relief parachute drops, and per the IEDC the test site is now accepting members, while the flight details rest on Windracers' own release.¹²⁴