Aerospace Visionary Paul Touw Shares What’s Next in Business Aviation Innovation

Paul Touw’s career as an engineer and aerospace industry entrepreneur spans missile defense programs to drafting and implementing the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to increase U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

Last year, Touw led Otto Aerospace’s launch of its Phantom 3500, a revolutionary airplane currently under development that uses carbon fiber materials and a laminar flow design to reduce aircraft weight and dramatically cut emissions.

A Silicon Valley approach to management is changing aviation, leading to innovations we see today, Touw says.

“No idea is a bad idea. It sounds trivial now, but the intermittent windshield wiper is a classic example of this management philosophy,” Touw explained. “At Otto Aerospace, this attitude led to innovations, including a slotted laminar flow wing, digital windows, the aircraft’s elliptical shape and extensive use of carbon fiber.”

Touw predicts that the adoption of laminar flow designs and increased use of carbon fiber materials, together with their associated manufacturing processes, will produce the most significant technological changes in aerospace over the next 10 years.

“People have been building airplanes by hand with cheap aluminum since the 1940s,” he said. “I think that’s going to shift when we prove you can build laminar flow aircraft easier, with lighter-weight parts, with orders of magnitude fewer parts.

“Most people have focused on fossil fuel as an evil enemy, looking to replace fossil fuels with electric and hydrogen, which doesn’t change the overall consumption of energy,” Touw said. “What I’m proud of and what I think is a model for the future is using a lot less to accomplish the mission.”