Pyka Delivers “First of Three Autonomous Electric Cargo Aircraft to AFWERX”

U.S‑based Pyka deliv­ered this week, the first of its three agreed autonomous elec­tric car­go air­craft called Pel­i­can to the Agili­ty Prime AFWERX Pro­gram, reports a press release.

Flight oper­a­tions per­son­nel from Pyka and AFWERX gath­ered on the tar­mac at the New Braun­fels Nation­al Air­port to wit­ness the arrival of the Pel­i­can with its 400 pound pay­load capac­i­ty and 200 mile range, built for remote off-air­port oper­a­tions.

This is the first deliv­ery in a fleet of three on lease to AFWERX for the USAF Agili­ty Prime pro­gram. It will explore oper­a­tional use cas­es for Pyka’s tech­nol­o­gy to address the most press­ing chal­lenges in the Depart­ment of the Air­force (DAF).

Michael Nor­cia, CEO at Pyka, remarked, “Our air­craft offers an unpar­al­leled plat­form for heavy-pay­load and long-range autonomous elec­tric car­go logis­tics. We believe the DAF is an ide­al cus­tomer to har­ness the ben­e­fits of this tech­nol­o­gy and is help­ing to advance zero-emis­sion avi­a­tion in the Unit­ed States by part­ner­ing with com­pa­nies like ours.”

Lt Col John Tekell, Agili­ty Prime Branch Chief, added, “The AFWERX Agili­ty Prime pro­gram looks for­ward to learn­ing about the deploy­ment and oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties of elec­tric air­craft through this con­tract.”

Pyka Pel­i­can Car­go Elec­tric Air­craft in Flight (cred­it: Pyka)

Back­ground

Pyka is a Cal­i­for­nia-based start­up, found­ed in 2017 in the back­yard of a Sil­i­con Val­ley home. It has the poten­tial of strength­en­ing the defence of the Unit­ed States. As the largest autonomous elec­tric car­go air­craft in its class, Pel­i­can Car­go is able to take­off and land in remote areas with min­i­mal ground infra­struc­ture; can be recharged in under 90 min­utes; and requires few per­son­nel to oper­ate.

Pyka’s pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy includes autonomous flight con­trol soft­ware, flight com­put­ers, high ener­gy den­si­ty bat­ter­ies, advanced elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems and car­bon com­pos­ite air­frames.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.flypyka.com

www.afwerx.com 

(Top image: Pyka Pel­i­can)

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