Followed WIGs (wing-in-ground-effect) since the days of Janes Surface Skimmers, when the editor beside I and three others were the only ones who persisted in this strange obsession; the hopes for hovercraft having devolved to hobbyists who raced them at weekends for fun.
Accordingly I can sum up the eventual failure of WIGs by pointing out they were so like aircraft that you may as well as have the aircraft; or like boats to the extent it made you figure it was worth buying the boat instead.
For in each case airplanes and boats were more adaptable than WIGs, seaplanes evolved to the extent places like Alaska relied on them; and unlike WIGs did not crash on a regular basis due contact between wing-tip and water at speed.
Likewise boats that used airfoil sections in order to skim the water were a novelty when there were few waves around, but existing boats were usable in any event.
WIGs like hovercraft therefore proved that jacks-of-all-trade were the better choice, despite not being the master of any one in particular. WIGs meantime were masters of flying over water that was not too choppy, and not much else*.
For sadly the sea had a habit of being wavy, with only one way to get over it and that was to build at scale... which becomes so expensive as to limit such craft to inland seas, where as often as not they are eventually beached.
The problem Regent have in building such drones for the US military is that, being small, they rely upon scaled-down waves of the sort nature only occasionally obliges with on the day: all photos of either the Soviet or US experiments appear in photos in which the sea looks like it does on the airline safety card.
The fact WIGs may yet exceed escape-velocity in the case of electrified craft in the current (!) age, however, is that (a) multiple motors are not so expensive to fit and operate and (b) wave-height computers allow for surface-following to substitute for the previous resort to sheer scale.
This combination of factors means Regent craft can operate slowly in displacement mode, faster on hydrofoils and fastest in ground-effect flight over water.
The alternative too having the resources (and energy) available to Regent is to draft a craft that appears it can plane at a variety of speeds, besides eventual elevation into ground-effect as and when sea-state permits.
At the same time we're banking on a further USP that derives from the fact that a 2-D form of catamaran can be scaled for a fraction of the time, effort and cost that is required traditionally to enlarge the sort of craft appearing up top.
Bear in mind in all of this too that the greater part of military activity being pursued at the time of writing... is being pursued in parts of the world where seas really are generally that glassy.
All things considered, it might appear that perhaps WIGs are finally coming of age?
* Flying taxis have a similar problem, electrified or not, in that cars can be parked anywhere beside getting you there in the first place.
