Joby Aviation and Beta Technologies progress to next stage of Agility Prime initiative

eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers Beta Tech­nolo­gies and Joby Avi­a­tion are edg­ing clos­er to flight test­ing with the US Air Force, after both pro­gressed to Phase III of the Ini­tial Capa­bil­i­ties Open­ing as part of Agili­ty Prime’s ‘Air Race to Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion’.

Accord­ing to the ICO, a suc­cess­ful Phase III can result in, ‘fur­ther pro­to­typ­ing, resource shar­ing, test­ing, pro­duc­tion, and field­ing as a launch cus­tomer.’

Joby Avi­a­tion is one of the lead­ers in the eVTOL air taxi mar­ket, hav­ing spent the last 10 years devel­op­ing its own qui­et, all-elec­tric air­craft. It has already received seri­ous back­ing from auto­mo­tive giant Toy­ota, after rais­ing $590 mil­lion in fund­ing ear­li­er this year.

While Beta Tech­nolo­gies has been gear­ing up to bring its own eVTOL air­craft, called ALIA, to mar­ket.

The com­pa­ny says it will sup­port organ deliv­ery, med­ical trans­port, urban air mobil­i­ty and car­go mis­sions, as well as build­ing a net­work of smart, renew­able recharg­ing sta­tions to sup­port the flex­i­ble, site-spe­cif­ic infra­struc­ture for eVTOL air­craft.

Both Joby and Beta were part of the first heat of the “Air Race” (Agili­ty Prime Area of Inter­est One: AOI‑1), which focused on air­craft in the emerg­ing trans­for­ma­tive ver­ti­cal flight mar­ket capa­ble of trans­port­ing 3–8 pas­sen­gers, at speeds greater than 100 miles per hour, with ranges of at least 100 miles.

Solic­i­ta­tions for AOI‑2 (1–2 pas­sen­ger) and AOI‑3 (unmanned car­go with greater than 1320 pounds max­i­mum gross take­off weight) were released two months after AOI‑1.

“We are pleased by the great response from indus­try and are look­ing for­ward to exer­cis­ing our rapid con­tract­ing vehi­cle,” said Lyn­da Rut­ledge, Pro­gram Exec­u­tive Offi­cer for Mobil­i­ty and Train­ing Air­craft.

The “Air Race to Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion” is a coop­er­a­tive learn­ing cam­paign con­sist­ing of three phas­es. It starts with a sub­mis­sion of prod­ucts out­lin­ing the company’s air­craft and busi­ness case matu­ri­ty.

Suc­cess­ful review results in an invi­ta­tion to Phase II, which is a direct Gov­ern­ment engage­ment to assess com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, oper­a­tional util­i­ty, tech­ni­cal readi­ness lev­el, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path, time­lines, needs, and oppor­tu­ni­ties, accord­ing to Col. Nathan Diller, Agili­ty Prime Team lead.  

Fol­low­ing Phase II, a Request for Pro­to­type Pro­pos­al may be issued to the per­former. Phase III can include col­lab­o­ra­tive test plan­ning and offer­ing of test assets and exper­tise. The intent is to lever­age this cam­paign for air­wor­thi­ness autho­riza­tion and poten­tial­ly pro­cure­ment of hard­ware, soft­ware, data, or ser­vices.

“With the progress of these first two part­ners, we are look­ing for­ward to quick­ly mov­ing on to air­wor­thi­ness assess­ments and flight test this year, as well as work­ing with oth­er part­ners in the new Areas of Inter­est,” Diller said. 

Agili­ty Prime test­ing will iden­ti­fy mis­sions where the max­i­mum pay­load and range of con­ven­tion­al rotary-wing or fixed-wing air­craft may be under­uti­lized or where these new orbs may pro­vide util­i­ty over ground-based logis­tics.

This could include dis­trib­uted logis­tics, med­ical evac­u­a­tion, fire­fight­ing, dis­as­ter relief, search and res­cue, and human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tions.