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Electra.aero wins Phase III SBIR Contract with U.S. Air Force to accelerate development and acquisition of its eSTOL Aircraft

Electra.aero has been award­ed a Phase III Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) con­tract from the U.S Air Force, which will sup­port the devel­op­ment of Electra’s hybrid-elec­tric ultra-short take­off and land­ing (eSTOL) air­craft.

The con­tract, award­ed through the Air Force Agili­ty Prime pro­gramme, will help accel­er­ate Elec­tra’s plan to begin flight test­ing a full-scale hybrid eSTOL tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor air­craft lat­er this year. It also charts a clear tran­si­tion path for future Air Force acqui­si­tion of Electra’s eSTOL air­craft.

Elec­tra was pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed an Agili­ty Prime SBIR Direct-to-Phase II con­tract ear­li­er last year, which accel­er­at­ed the devel­op­ment of Electra’s hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem tech­nol­o­gy. The Agili­ty Prime pro­gram aims to cham­pi­on the inno­va­tion and tech tran­si­tion of elec­tric air­craft into the advanced air mobil­i­ty for both mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions.

John S. Lang­ford, Founder and CEO of Elec­tra, said: “Hybrid-elec­tric STOL tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to deliv­er game-chang­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy improve­ments and mean­ing­ful pay­load and range per­for­mance for Air Force mis­sions of the future. We are thrilled to con­tin­ue our close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Agili­ty Prime team and are hon­oured to be select­ed for this impor­tant con­tract.”

Elec­tra’s unique eSTOL air­craft can oper­ate from spaces as small as 300x100 feet using its patent-pend­ing dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion and blown lift tech­nol­o­gy. A small tur­bine- pow­ered gen­er­a­tor recharges the bat­ter­ies mid-flight, elim­i­nat­ing the need for new ground charg­ing infra­struc­ture.

The air­craft is cur­rent­ly being designed to trans­port up to 1,800 pounds of car­go or move sev­en to nine pas­sen­gers up to 500 miles. Elec­tra says its air­craft can oper­ate in a vari­ety of envi­ron­ments rang­ing from busy urban areas to remote land­ing strips, and fly mis­sions rang­ing from on-demand pas­sen­ger flights to car­go trans­porta­tion, search and res­cue oper­a­tions and med­ical mis­sions.

Ben Mar­chion­na, Electra’s Direc­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy and Inno­va­tion, added: “Agili­ty Prime is lead­ing the out­side-the-box think­ing nec­es­sary to quick­ly and afford­ably deliv­er dis­rup­tive capa­bil­i­ties to nation­al secu­ri­ty and oth­er U.S. Gov­ern­ment mis­sions like human­i­tar­i­an aid and dis­as­ter relief.

“Hybrid eSTOL air­craft are par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed to sup­port the Air Force’s agile com­bat employ­ment doc­trine by pro­vid­ing mid­dle- and last-mile island-hop­ping and dis­trib­uted car­go logis­tics in the Indo-Pacif­ic the­atre or oper­a­tions in areas with lim­it­ed infra­struc­ture like Africa.”

The Air Force launched Agili­ty Prime to help accel­er­ate the com­mer­cial mar­ket for advanced air mobil­i­ty vehi­cles. Lever­ag­ing unique test­ing resources and rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing gov­ern­ment use cas­es for dis­trib­uted logis­tics and dis­as­ter response, the gov­ern­ment plans to mit­i­gate cur­rent com­mer­cial mar­ket and reg­u­la­to­ry risks.

Agili­ty Prime also aims to bring togeth­er indus­try, investor, and gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ties to estab­lish safe­ty and secu­ri­ty stan­dards while accel­er­at­ing the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of this rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nol­o­gy.

Lt. Col John “Wasp” Tekell, Air Force Agili­ty Prime Lead, said: “We are excit­ed to expand our part­ner­ship with Elec­tra through this Phase III con­tract award. Electra’s hybrid eSTOL tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to bring a valu­able, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed capa­bil­i­ty to the U.S. Air Force and Joint Part­ners.

“We look for­ward to sup­port­ing the rapid devel­op­ment, flight test­ing, and tran­si­tion of eSTOL air­craft while con­tin­u­ing to sup­port the devel­op­ment of advanced air mobil­i­ty.”

We recent­ly spoke to Diana Siegel, Head of Strat­e­gy at Elec­tra, as part of our pod­cast series. You can lis­ten to the episode by click­ing here.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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