rwehapi2003 & serious1 on HapsChile..
This is pure speculation on this end, but......
Having followed Worldwide Aeros for some time (their blue AEROS logo appears above Raytheon's on the partnership page at HAPSCHILE) it's quite interesting to see they are now the High Altitude Platform provider for the company -Haps Chile Limitada.
Interesting because, they currently offer no HAPs style vehicle (HIGH Altitude Platforms that are unmanned, autonomous, and likely solar-powered) and outside of dabbling with such back some years ago, have chosen to focus on their core products: tethered aerostats and single pilot -low altitude- airships (read blimp).
Aeros' R&D is currently absorbed with a Heavy lifter concept (think jumbo airliner rather than truck), going by the odd name Aeroscraft. Good luck to them here.
What Worldwide Aeros could offer a HAPS-centric operation is not R&D, but production abilities.
They can build airships, without a doubt.
Far above Stuttgart U.'s abilities.......where it would involve on-site fabrication of say a rigid style airship of sufficient size -like the Stratellite S-2A seen floating across the sky in the primary image above each page of HapsChile.
Stuttgart may well handle the Airchain production -outsourced prefab work that gets boxed and shipped, with little on-site construction.
So, best guess, Aeros is partnered in some way, to take all of Stuttgart/Sanswire know-how/efforts on HAPS (which, imho, is substantial based on all the GERMAN efforts [both scientific and hands-on] and Sanswires pocketbook to get prototypical work done with S-1/S-2A) and build the suckers for Chile and perhaps....
the world.
