AFWERX Agility Prime completes first USAF-piloted flight of an eVTOL aircraft with Kitty Hawk

The AFWERX Agili­ty Prime pro­gramme took anoth­er step for­ward at the end of 2021 with the first US gov­ern­ment remote­ly pilot­ed flight of an eVTOL air­craft.

Capt. Ter­rence McKen­na, an Air Force Reserve pilot with the 370th Flight Test Squadron and the Test and Exper­i­men­ta­tion Lead for AFWERX Agili­ty Prime, par­tic­i­pat­ed in remote pilot in con­trol (rPIC) train­ing on the Heav­i­side air­craft at the Kit­ty Hawk Corporation’s facil­i­ty in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia from Decem­ber 13th-17th.

The train­ing cul­mi­nat­ed in the first gov­ern­ment remote pilot­ed flight of an eVTOL air­craft when he suc­cess­ful­ly flew the Heav­i­side via the Bud­dy Box Sys­tem. This first Air­man flight demon­strat­ed anoth­er key mile­stone in the col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Kit­ty Hawk, in part­ner­ship with Agili­ty Prime, is eval­u­at­ing a train­ing syl­labus for their unmanned eVTOL air­craft, the Heav­i­side. McKenna’s over 15 years of exper­tise pilot­ing manned air­craft such as the C‑5 and the T‑38, as well as design­ing, devel­op­ing, and test­ing manned and small unmanned air­craft sys­tems (sUAS) as a civil­ian engi­neer, assist­ed Kit­ty Hawk’s team of engi­neers in refin­ing both their prod­uct and their train­ing pro­ce­dures.

Josh Lane, a Flight Test Engi­neer (FTE) for Agili­ty Prime, began work­ing with Kit­ty Hawk in March 2021 and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Kit­ty Hawk to devel­op test plans sup­port­ing their pro­to­type test­ing and goals to com­mer­cial­iza­tion.

Focus­ing on Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) revised Part 23, the safe­ty stan­dards and type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments for small air­craft, and oth­er poten­tial­ly rel­e­vant parts of the Code of Fed­er­al Reg­u­la­tions, eVTOL com­pa­nies like Kit­ty Hawk gained a greater under­stand­ing of the require­ments they would have to com­ply with in order to gain type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. How­ev­er, Lane explained that the road to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for eVTOLs is an ongo­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tive process.

Lane said: “These are new designs that don’t fit the FAA mould, and there’s not a 100 per cent fit in some of these com­pa­nies’ cas­es, so there’s a lot of engage­ment going on get­ting this path to a cer­ti­fied FAA air­craft. They’re using base­line Parts and work­ing with the FAA to deter­mine what that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion basis is and what areas to be adjust­ed and addressed.”

McKen­na added: “Agili­ty Prime is fig­ur­ing out how we approach train­ing for these types of air­craft. This is a whole new ball­park.”

The Heav­i­side Air­craft

Named after the Eng­lish engi­neer, physi­cist, and math­e­mati­cian Oliv­er Heav­i­side, the Heav­i­side is Kit­ty Hawk’s cur­rent fly­ing mod­el. The com­pa­ny has worked through sev­er­al iter­a­tions of this vehi­cle and are in the plan­ning stages for the next.

The Heav­i­side was first deployed in 2019 after near­ly a decade of devel­op­ment. This aircraft’s max­i­mum take­off weight is approx­i­mate­ly 880 pounds, allow­ing for a pas­sen­ger up to about 176 pounds. Heav­i­side can trav­el at speeds of rough­ly 180 miles per hour, but most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, it remains qui­et: only about 35 deci­bels at 1,500 feet above ground lev­el, which is slight­ly loud­er than a whis­per and about 100 times qui­eter than a heli­copter. Addi­tion­al­ly, Heav­i­side has demon­strat­ed 237 tran­si­tions between hov­er and for­ward flight, as well as a range of 100 miles on a sin­gle charge.

Heav­i­side takes advan­tage of sev­er­al advanced tech­nolo­gies, such as Dis­trib­uted Elec­tric Propul­sion (DEP), as this air­craft has eight ful­ly elec­tric pro­pellers. Addi­tion­al­ly, Lane explains that Kit­ty Hawk has refined its use of auto­mat­ed flight capa­bil­i­ties through its Ground Con­trol Sta­tion (GCS); engi­neers can upload a flight plan, telling the vehi­cle to fly to cer­tain loca­tions, and the Heav­i­side can per­form the entire flight pro­file with­out human inter­ven­tion.

How­ev­er, a train­ing fea­ture of the Heav­i­side is the Bud­dy Box set­up, which is a sec­ondary remote con­troller wired to a pri­ma­ry con­troller. This sys­tem is intend­ed for the use of an instruc­tor and a stu­dent per­form­ing the duties of an exter­nal pilot in man­u­al flight mode; the trainee han­dles and oper­ates the air­craft while the instruc­tor pro­vides super­vi­sion and sup­port.

The Bud­dy Box sys­tem works much like a driver’s edu­ca­tion car: the dri­ving instruc­tor is in the pas­sen­ger seat and allows the stu­dent to man­u­al­ly oper­ate the vehi­cle, but is ulti­mate­ly in full con­trol and able to brake if nec­es­sary. Like­wise, for a Bud­dy Box set­up, the instruc­tor can over­ride any direc­tion that the remote pilot in com­mand (rPIC) gives the air­craft from the pri­ma­ry con­troller.

The Heav­i­side and future mod­els will not rely on an exter­nal pilot for flight oper­a­tions, but uti­liz­ing this train­ing method now affords the oppor­tu­ni­ty for more imme­di­ate and qual­i­ta­tive feed­back on the air­craft, while also build­ing out a train­ing syl­labus for the GCS oper­a­tor.

Train­ing with Cap­tain Ter­rence McKen­na

Though the cur­rent train­ing plan for the Heav­i­side includes a five-day famil­iari­sa­tion course and a 12-day rPIC qual­i­fi­ca­tion course, McKen­na par­tic­i­pat­ed in ele­ments of only the famil­iari­sa­tion course.

Kit­ty Hawk uti­lizes tech­niques such as Sce­nario-Based Train­ing (SBT), which is derived from the FAA’s Air­men Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Stan­dards (ACS) and places the stu­dent in life­like sit­u­a­tions in order to com­plete each les­son objec­tive. Addi­tion­al­ly, Kit­ty Hawk employs Learn­er-Cen­tred Grad­ing, allow­ing stu­dents to assess their own per­for­mance in open con­ver­sa­tion with their instruc­tor.

Agili­ty Prime chose McKen­na to par­tic­i­pate in this train­ing because he ful­filled Kit­ty Hawk’s trainee pre­req­ui­sites, which include pos­sess­ing either a mil­i­tary pilot rat­ing or an FAA Part 107 and 61 cer­tifi­cate. Through a build­ing-block approach, stu­dents must also demon­strate pro­fi­cien­cy in fly­ing small­er remote con­trol (RC) air­craft, such as fixed-wing air­craft and quad­copter, before grad­u­at­ing to the Heav­i­side.

Dur­ing the week in Cal­i­for­nia, McKen­na pri­mar­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed on the duties of the exter­nal pilot, fly­ing in man­u­al mode, rather than auto­mat­ed flight and oper­at­ing the GCS. Days one and two focused on ground aca­d­e­mics, includ­ing sim­u­la­tion train­ing, pre­flight check­lists, and expo­sure to the Heaviside’s GCS. Inclement weath­er kept the air­craft ground­ed, but McKen­na report­ed a pro­duc­tive day of review­ing oper­a­tions and dis­cussing syl­labus devel­op­ment.

Then, on Day three, after com­plet­ing sev­er­al flights on small­er RC air­craft, McKen­na suc­cess­ful­ly pilot­ed the first USAF flight of an Agili­ty Prime-spon­sored vehi­cle, nav­i­gat­ing the Heav­i­side through the sky as the Exter­nal Pilot at Kit­ty Hawk’s test site. By the end of the day, McKen­na had con­duct­ed three suc­cess­ful flights, focus­ing on ver­ti­cal manoeu­vres, take­off and land­ing, manip­u­la­tion on all axes, auto-hov­er, and man­u­al flight.

McKen­na described that oper­at­ing as the Exter­nal Pilot allows pilots to get a feel for what the air­craft is capa­ble of as it moves through the sky.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent par­a­digm for oper­at­ing the air­craft,” McKen­na said. “A cru­cial thing that the RC con­troller allows you to do that a com­plete­ly unmanned or a com­plete­ly ground-con­trolled sta­tion based approach does not is [gain] that intu­ition about the flight char­ac­ter­is­tics of the air­craft that are so impor­tant [for oper­a­tional employ­ment].”

Days four and five con­clud­ed the week by train­ing McKen­na on fixed-wing flight, out­bound and inbound tran­si­tions to ver­ti­cal flight, and fly­ing full pro­files. McKen­na report­ed enthu­si­as­tic sat­is­fac­tion with the test­ed train­ing meth­ods from Agili­ty Prime, AETC Det 62, and Kit­ty Hawk.

“I feel very con­fi­dent in the train­ing [includ­ing] pre-study, ground aca­d­e­mics, sim­u­la­tion work, and sur­ro­gate flights to get us to this point,” McKen­na said.

Syl­labus Devel­op­ment in Part­ner­ship with AETC’s Detach­ment 62

While McKen­na indeed learned to remote­ly pilot the Heav­i­side, a cru­cial objec­tive of the week­long exer­cise was to eval­u­ate and improve the train­ing plan itself for future oper­a­tions.

“The main objec­tive is to help col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly devel­op syl­labi for these plat­forms with Kit­ty Hawk and our AETC detach­ment [Det 62],” McKen­na said.

To mon­i­tor and eval­u­ate McKenna’s train­ing process, the Air Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing Com­mand (AETC) sent out Det 62 per­son­nel to lend their expe­ri­ence with devel­op­ing flight train­ing plans. The Det 62 team worked close­ly with Kit­ty Hawk and the Agili­ty Prime test team to draft an ini­tial syl­labus for McKen­na for test and train­ing.

The team coor­di­nat­ed with Kit­ty Hawk’s ana­lysts, as well as Agili­ty Prime, to observe, gath­er data, review train­ing process­es, and con­duct detailed debriefs along the way. More­over, Brit­tney Tough, Kit­ty Hawk’s Senior Flight Train­ing Man­ag­er, also brought exten­sive knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence to the table and served as an asset to gov­ern­ment flight test teams.

“There’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty between the mil­i­tary and the civil­ians to learn from each oth­er on good prac­tices and approach­es to train­ing plan devel­op­ment,” Lane said. “I’m cer­tain that there’s going to be some learn­ing going in both direc­tions.”

Look­ing for­ward to the poten­tial mil­i­tary util­i­ty of the Heav­i­side, Lane expressed the vital­i­ty of the AETC’s pres­ence at and con­tri­bu­tion to the project. He said: “It’s huge that AETC sent out this detach­ment, and they’re doing this ear­ly work to low­er risk and pave the path for inte­grat­ing one or more of these com­pa­nies’ sys­tems into mil­i­tary use, and try­ing to make sure that’s as seam­less as pos­si­ble.”

Lane and McKen­na both empha­sized the impor­tance of Agili­ty Prime’s ear­ly involve­ment and coop­er­a­tion with indus­try in order to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the eVTOL mar­ket.

“There’s three legs to the stool: train­ing, the air­craft itself, and the logis­tics to sup­port it,” Lane explained. “The typ­i­cal goal is to have your train­ing sys­tem in place, so that when you field a sys­tem, you have peo­ple that are ready to use it.”

McKen­na spoke to the suc­cess of Air Force ear­ly involve­ment through Agili­ty Prime with eVTOL com­pa­nies like Kit­ty Hawk.

“That inter­ac­tion is pay­ing div­i­dends, and it’s con­tin­u­ing to grow,” he said. “First­hand, I’ve seen that inter­ac­tion prove fruit­ful on both ends.”

Addi­tion­al Suc­cess­es: BVLOS Flight and Fly­Ohio

The first USAF-pilot­ed flight of an eVTOL builds on recent high­lights and mile­stones in the Agili­ty Prime pro­gram. On Nov. 10, 2021, Kit­ty Hawk suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its first beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) flight dur­ing the Ohio Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty Show­case, orga­nized by Fly­Ohio, at the Spring­field-Beck­ley Munic­i­pal Air­port, near Wright-Pat­ter­son Air Force Base.

“The Air Force has been a strong part­ner for us as we bring eVTOLs clos­er to being ready for human flight,” said Sebas­t­ian Thrun, CEO of Kit­ty Hawk. “In Ohio, we hit an impor­tant mile­stone mak­ing us the first UAM provider to fly a remote­ly-pilot­ed air­craft BVLOS in a non-restrict­ed air space.”

Using SkyVi­sion, a ground-based detect-and-avoid sys­tem devel­oped by the Air Force Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry, in con­junc­tion with the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (ODOT), Kit­ty Hawk safe­ly maneu­vered Heav­i­side among oth­er manned flight traf­fic.

Col. Nathan Diller, AFWERX direc­tor, said: “The Heav­i­side BVLOS test­ing pro­vides an excel­lent exam­ple of Agili­ty Prime’s aim to part­ner with indus­try and pro­vide access to key gov­ern­ment test resources, such as SkyVi­sion, and [this] exper­tise con­tin­ues to help advance the com­mer­cial eVTOL indus­try.”

Heaviside’s Goals and Ecosys­tem Impact

The Heaviside’s util­i­ty extends into both the com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary worlds. Kit­ty Hawk hopes to pro­vide a com­mer­cial air taxi ser­vice, but their eVTOL presents a mul­ti­tude of oppor­tu­ni­ties for both civil­ian and gov­ern­ment use.

Ulti­mate­ly, Kit­ty Hawk hopes to low­er costs with their vehi­cle, mak­ing aer­i­al rideshar­ing more acces­si­ble and afford­able to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.

McKen­na not­ed that poten­tial mil­i­tary and indus­try use cas­es large­ly over­lap for the Heav­i­side: the air­craft could trans­port injured per­son­nel, evac­u­ate peo­ple from hos­tile ter­ri­to­ries, deliv­er car­go or first aid, make emer­gency med­ical ser­vices more acces­si­ble in rur­al areas or con­gest­ed cities, and assist with fire­fight­ing or search and res­cue oper­a­tions, among many oth­er poten­tial sce­nar­ios.

“What we’re try­ing to do is devel­op a train­ing pipeline in the Air Force to under­stand these types of air­craft,” McKen­na said. “If we can get a joint Air Force-indus­try exper­i­men­ta­tion team, we can now open the aper­ture on engage­ments for these types of air­craft dra­mat­i­cal­ly.”

Regard­less of how these vehi­cles are put to use post-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Lane drew atten­tion to the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of imple­ment­ing eVTOL air­craft into soci­ety. Though Prime focus­es on how the Heav­i­side and its com­peti­tors affect the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem (NAS), new eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy will impact the entire avi­a­tion ecosys­tem.

“Most sim­plis­ti­cal­ly, it’s more than just air­craft; it’s these airsys­tems and the entire ecosys­tem that they will fly in and that need to sup­port them,” Lane said. “There’s research and test­ing activ­i­ty going on to devel­op, enhance, and bol­ster the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem (NAS) so that we can start incor­po­rat­ing these new capa­bil­i­ties.”

Over­all, both McKen­na and Lane praised the team­work nec­es­sary to achieve this mile­stone flight.

“We’re estab­lish­ing the inter­ac­tion and the process­es to make sure every­thing is vet­ted and approved and done in a safe man­ner,” McKen­na said. “It’s a great way to accel­er­ate inno­va­tion, sup­port­ing indus­try and keep­ing up with them. It’s been a great team effort, and I’m excit­ed about how it came togeth­er.”