Well damn!!!
Back in the secondary/uni days I came up a with a concept for a helicopter/compound aircraft. I couldn't interest any of the engineering profs at my uni so I filed it away.
It was based on a Rutan concept for a two place aircraft in Popular Mechanics. My design was a two to three place aircraft with staggered seating, the third possibly facing backwards, with a forward swept, negative staggered wing, bicycle landing gear with outriggers (a la B-52) and either wing mounted pusher props or ducted fans. I gave up on the idea of a pure heli and settled on a jump take off gyro with a powered rotor to overcome the induced drag of a pure gyro ( see Igor Benson's Powergyro concept) with an unloaded rotor flying on the wiing (Like the Cheyenne.) I figured 180 kts+. Not unreasonable given the technology of the 60-70's.
High speed, long loiter times at altitude would make for a great UAV. Too bad I'm a bit of an anti-statist
Well more power to them! Will be cool to see what they come up with...