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BETA ALIA CTOL “Completes First Performance Evaluations with U.S Dept of Defence”

Last week, BETA Tech­nolo­gies ALIA CTOL elec­tric air­craft com­plet­ed its first  per­for­mance eval­u­a­tions with the U.S Depart­ment of Defence at Duke Field, Eglin Air Force base, Flori­da reports a press release.

The tri­als had been car­ried out over a three month peri­od with the 413th Flight Test Squadron via the Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime program.This was the next phase of a larg­er Devel­op­men­tal Test and Eval­u­a­tion effort being con­duct­ed by the USAF to assess elec­tric aviation’s applic­a­bil­i­ty for DoD mis­sions. 

BETA’s ALIA air­craft arrived at Duke Field on Octo­ber 26th fol­low­ing a pio­neer­ing 1,500 nau­ti­cal mile mis­sion down the east coast, where the ALIA flew through the Class Bra­vo air­space of Boston and New York, and became the first elec­tric air­craft to fly along the Flight Restrict­ed Zone of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. to stop at Joint Base Andrews. 

The air­craft was employed “for oper­a­tional exper­i­men­ta­tion and USAF pilot and main­te­nance assess­ments and a Mobile­Dome sim­u­la­tor, which the BETA flight test team and USAF pilots used to rehearse flights and prac­tice emer­gency pro­ce­dures and served as a key tool for train­ing and immer­sion for stake­hold­ers and sub­ject mat­ter experts (SMEs),” explains the release. “BETA also installed a Lev­el 3 DC fast-charg­er (350kW), the first-ever elec­tric air­craft charg­ing sta­tion at a Depart­ment of Defense instal­la­tion. This mul­ti­modal charg­er sup­port­ed charge needs between flights.” 

Dur­ing the eval­u­a­tion, BETA’s pri­ma­ry test team worked hand-in-hand with AFWERX, the Air Force’s inno­va­tion unit and the 413th Test Squadron to con­duct hands-on exper­i­men­ta­tion and train­ing with the tech­nol­o­gy to val­i­date mil­i­tary use cas­es includ­ing crit­i­cal resup­ply, car­go deliv­ery and per­son­nel trans­port.

(USAF Pho­to: Cred­it — Samuel King Jr.)

Key Mile­stones

Air Force-Direct­ed Oper­a­tional Exper­i­men­ta­tion and Train­ing

The mis­sions from Duke Field, which ranged from short sor­ties to extend­ed mis­sions, aver­aged approx­i­mate­ly USD15 in ener­gy per flight. The 413th Squadron invit­ed many local Air Force pilots to par­tic­i­pate in elec­tric air­craft train­ing at the Mobile­Dome sim­u­la­tor, pro­vid­ing input on flight char­ac­ter­is­tics and ease of plat­form learn­ing.

Per­formed the First Sim­u­lat­ed Casu­al­ty Evac­u­a­tion Mis­sion with an Elec­tric Air­craft 

BETA par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sim­u­lat­ed casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion (CASEVAC) sce­nario with the 41st Res­cue Squadron, an active duty Air Force unit based out of Moody AFB in Geor­gia. This mis­sion includ­ed a sce­nario of a sim­u­lat­ed patient along­side ground forces, a sim­u­lat­ed Quick Reac­tion Force (QRF) and an HH-60W and ALIA air­craft. The HH-60W trans­port­ed the casu­al­ty from a for­ward oper­at­ing base (FOB) to an oper­at­ing loca­tion locat­ed in friend­ly ter­ri­to­ry, then returned to the FOB with the QRF. The ALIA flew the patient from the oper­at­ing loca­tion to med­ical care reliev­ing the HH-60W crew, and com­plet­ed the first CASEVAC and first direct oper­a­tions mis­sion with USAF for an elec­tric air­craft. This sce­nario demon­strates key impacts that elec­tric avi­a­tion can have on mil­i­tary ser­vices, includ­ing an increase in response time at the FOB. 

This sim­u­lat­ed mis­sion also demon­strat­ed a decrease in resources required via elec­tric avi­a­tion. A sim­i­lar C‑130 patient trans­port requires sim­i­lar run­way length and would require a crew of at least 3 and approx­i­mate­ly USD1,600 in fuel. The ALIA accom­plished this with a crew of two and an ener­gy cost of approx­i­mate­ly USD5 in elec­tric­i­ty. 

Exe­cut­ed a Main­te­nance Recov­ery Team Mis­sion 

ALIA com­plet­ed a sim­u­lat­ed Main­te­nance Recov­ery Team (MRT) mis­sion, deliv­er­ing assets for an F‑35 Light­ning II which land­ed at Duke Field. BETA’s elec­tric air­craft flew to Tyn­dall AFB to pick up the sim­u­lat­ed part and bring it back to the air­craft in need. The mis­sion has impli­ca­tions for train­ing, exer­cise and oper­a­tional main­te­nance respons­es. 

The abil­i­ty to fly an MRT at dis­tances nor­mal­ly rel­e­gat­ed to dri­ving opens pos­si­bil­i­ties for cost and man-hour sav­ings. The cost esti­mate for a main­te­nance response of a home-unit based ALIA, involv­ing two flight legs, would be approx­i­mate­ly USD25 in elec­tric­i­ty and one hour of flight time. A stan­dard F‑250, cov­er­ing the same geo­graph­i­cal dis­tance, would cost approx­i­mate­ly USD45 in fuel and equate approx­i­mate­ly four hours of dri­ving. 

A faster response time allows main­te­nance to be per­formed on the same-day and can direct­ly improve down­time for advanced air­craft, result­ing in fur­ther reduced costs.

(USAF Pho­to: Cred­it — Samuel King Jr.)

Inte­grat­ing and Grow­ing BETA’s Charge Net­work 

The BETA team flew ALIA from Duke to Val­dos­ta, Geor­gia, tran­sit­ing through Decatur to offi­cial­ly com­mis­sion the BETA charg­er at Val­dos­ta Region­al Air­port. BETA is also val­i­dat­ing mobile charg­ing solu­tions for con­tin­gency and aus­tere oper­at­ing loca­tions. 

This deploy­ment is a sig­nif­i­cant next step for BETA and the DoD via the AFWERX Agili­ty Prime Pro­gram. Through this part­ner­ship, BETA became the first elec­tric air­craft devel­op­er to receive an air­wor­thi­ness cer­tifi­cate for manned flight from the mil­i­tary, and has also con­duct­ed the industry’s only manned qual­i­ta­tive eval­u­a­tion flights with test pilots from the Air Force and Army. 

BETA con­tin­ues to progress devel­op­ment of its ALIA CTOL and ALIA VTOL towards FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, antic­i­pat­ing entry into ser­vice in 2025 and 2026. Late last year, the com­pa­ny opened a 188,500 sq. ft air­craft pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in South Burling­ton, Ver­mont, to man­u­fac­ture the air­craft. 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.beta.team/

https://afwerx.com/divisions/prime/agility-prime/

(Top image: USAF Pho­to: Cred­it — Samuel King Jr.)

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