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BETA Delivers first piloted electric aircraft to DoD for experimentation

BETA Tech­nolo­gies has land­ed its all-elec­tric air­craft at Duke Field, Eglin Air Force Base, to begin a deploy­ment peri­od with the US Air Force. The air­craft will be utilised for a des­ig­nat­ed cur­ricu­lum of exper­i­men­ta­tion over the course of a months-long deploy­ment.

BETA’s ALIA air­craft will remain at Duke Field for sev­er­al months to work with the 413th Squadron to con­duct hands-on exper­i­men­ta­tion and train­ing, and will val­i­date use cas­es includ­ing crit­i­cal resup­ply, car­go deliv­ery, and per­son­nel trans­port.

BETA flew ALIA down to Duke field, dur­ing which time ALIA cov­ered more than 1,700 nau­ti­cal miles across 12 states, includ­ing:
● A stop in Syra­cuse to meet with the Fed­er­al Inter­a­gency Work­ing Group respon­si­ble for plan­ning and coor­di­na­tion to inte­grate advanced air mobil­i­ty air­craft into the nation­al air­space sys­tem;
● Com­mis­sion­ing the first Elec­tric Air­craft Charg­er in Mass­a­chu­setts (Marsh­field)
● Fly­ing in the Class B air­space of Boston and New York City;
● Becom­ing the first all-elec­tric air­craft cleared to fly into the high­ly restrict­ed Wash­ing­ton DC Flight Restrict­ed Zone (FRZ) with its arrival onto Joint Base Andrews in Mary­land;
● And break­ing ground on the first elec­tric air­craft charg­er in North Car­oli­na at Raleigh Exec­u­tive Jet­port, in part­ner­ship with NCDOT and AFWERX.

Each flight was mon­i­tored by sub­ject mat­ter experts (SMEs), who cap­tured giga­bytes of data from the more than 12 hour-plus-long series of flights con­duct­ed. The Com­pa­ny was able to charge the air­craft at sev­er­al of its own charg­ing sta­tions, includ­ing one of its newest sites, locat­ed in Marsh­field, Mass­a­chu­setts. This is one of 14 BETA charg­ers online today, with more than 60 addi­tion­al sites in devel­op­ment or con­struc­tion.

“For the past sev­er­al years, AFWERX has pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal input and sup­port to the BETA pro­grams,” said Kyle Clark, BETA’s Founder and CEO. “Deploy­ing ALIA for exper­i­men­ta­tion and train­ing at Duke Field is the nat­ur­al next step in our part­ner­ship.”

AFWERX direc­tor Elliott Leigh added: “The Depart­ment of the Air Force is con­stant­ly search­ing for the next gen­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy to make our warfight­ers safer and more effi­cient. As agile inno­va­tors, we believe that part­ner­ing with Amer­i­can busi­ness­es is the key to this goal for deliv­er­ing dis­rup­tive air capa­bil­i­ties.”

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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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