BETA Completes Deployments “with Two Leading Commands of U.S DOD”

Dur­ing the past month, BETA Tech­nolo­gies has car­ried out eval­u­a­tive deploy­ments with two lead­ing Com­mands of the USAF: The Air Com­bat Com­mand (ACC) and Air Mobil­i­ty Com­mand (AMC), reports a press release.

These deploy­ments are the third and fourth mil­i­tary exer­cis­es BETA has con­duct­ed this year as the Depart­ment of Defence (DOD) looks “to val­i­date elec­tric aviation’s appli­ca­tions for mil­i­tary mis­sions such as crit­i­cal resup­ply, car­go deliv­ery, and per­son­nel trans­port,” explains the release. The com­pa­ny believes these are the first demon­stra­tions com­plet­ed by an elec­tric air­craft with Major Com­mands of the USAF. 

The release con­tin­ues, “They were real-time exer­cis­es, where BETA was called upon and, with­in min­utes, need­ed to dis­patch on car­go-car­ry­ing mis­sions. It was anoth­er active engage­ment as the Air Force con­tin­ues to eval­u­ate this tech­nol­o­gy for its future oper­a­tions.”    

Fol­low­ing sev­er­al cross-coun­try flights from BETA’s HQ at Burling­ton Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, the company’s ALIA CTOL air­craft arrived at the Alpe­na Com­bat Readi­ness Train­ing Cen­tre (CRTC) in Michi­gan, pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate in a week-long Con­tin­gency Loca­tion Oper­a­tions Rehearsal (CLOR) exer­cise with the ACC. 

Over the course of this four-day exer­cise, ALIA:-

: Com­plet­ed more than 24 flight hours and trans­port­ed more than 2,200 lbs of car­go (up to 500 lbs at a time).

: Deliv­ered var­i­ous sup­plies, includ­ing Meals Ready to Eat (MREs); Utilised Group Ration Box­es (UGR); crit­i­cal med­ical equip­ment; cam­era sys­tems; and a Tac­tics Secu­ri­ty Sys­tem (TSS).

: Exe­cut­ed a sim­u­lat­ed MEDEVAC mis­sion between oper­a­tional bases. 

: Filled a logis­tics gap cre­at­ed by a can­celled C‑130 air­lift.

(Pho­to Cred­it: BETA Technologies/Brian Jenk­ins)

After suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing the CLOR exer­cise, the ALIA then flew to Spring­field, Ohio where, fol­low­ing exten­sive ground school and sim­u­la­tor train­ing, UPS pilot Eric Berge­sen con­duct­ed a qual­i­ta­tive eval­u­a­tion flight.

From there, the air­craft flew into Vir­ginia to sim­u­late cus­tomer routes, then land­ed at Atlantic City Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (ACY) where BETA, along with the FAA, AMC, Nation­al Aero­space Research & Tech­nol­o­gy Park (NARTP), Atlantic Cape Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and the Atlantic Coun­ty Eco­nom­ic Alliance (ACEA), host­ed an event and flight demo to show­case the elec­tric future of avi­a­tion. 

Also, last week, BETA par­tic­i­pat­ed in a fur­ther mil­i­tary exer­cise in a demon­stra­tion for AMC, con­duct­ing a series of flights between Dover Air Force Base, Delaware and McGuire Air Force Base in Burling­ton Coun­ty, New Jer­sey. These are two pri­or­i­ty hubs for Air Force trans­porta­tion and logis­tics. ALIA brought its charg­ing solu­tions onsite to recharge the air­craft.

Over the course of this day-long exer­cise, ALIA:-

: Com­plet­ed five suc­cess­ful flights that includ­ed asset repo­si­tion­ing and trans­fer­ring crit­i­cal car­go between Air Force assets.

: Deliv­ered var­i­ous mul­ti-hun­dred-pound loads filled with cal­i­brat­ed Pre­ci­sion Mea­sure­ment Equip­ment Lab­o­ra­to­ry (PMEL).

: Trans­formed 4+ hours of dri­ving with an hour and a half’s worth of flight time. 

The release goes on, “These real-world mis­sions, exe­cut­ed at the request of the ACC and AMC respec­tive­ly, and coor­di­nat­ed in part with AFWERX, high­light­ed ALIA’s abil­i­ty to fill logis­tics gaps, sup­port mis­sion gen­er­a­tion, and pro­vide a reli­able plat­form for trans­port­ing crit­i­cal car­go and med­ical car­go in com­bat oper­a­tions.”

Alyxan­dra Scalone, 305 Main­te­nance Squadron Pro­duc­tion Con­troller, com­ment­ed, “This brings key inno­va­tion to the mis­sion. It’s going to make things faster and sim­pler. Dover is about two and a half hours away from us, yet today’s flight only took 45 min­utes.”

These oper­a­tions fol­low two suc­cess­ful deploy­ments BETA com­plet­ed with the Depart­ment of Defence ear­li­er this year.

BETA Tech­nolo­gies Par­tic­i­pates in “USAF Mul­ti-Day Agile Com­bat Employ­ment Sce­nario” 

BETA has a long­stand­ing rela­tion­ship with the DOD and been a part of Agili­ty Prime’s AFWERX pro­gram since 2020. This has includ­ed a num­ber of indus­try-firsts via the pro­gram such as manned flight release; Air­force and Army pilots fly­ing qual­i­ta­tive eval­u­a­tions of the ALIA; a com­plet­ed deploy­ment (3 months with the 413th FLTS in Eglin); and, more recent­ly, the first to install an elec­tric air­craft charg­er on a DOD instal­la­tion.

Mean­while, BETA con­tin­ues to progress its all-elec­tric air­craft, ALIA CTOL and VTOL, towards FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, antic­i­pat­ing entry into ser­vice in 2025 and 2026. And late last year, the com­pa­ny opened the doors to its 188,500 sq. ft air­craft pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in South Burling­ton, Ver­mont, where it will man­u­fac­ture the air­craft.

BETA has firm orders from cus­tomers includ­ing UPS, Bris­tow, LCI, BLADE and Unit­ed Ther­a­peu­tics, as well as con­tracts with the U.S. Army and Air Force.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.beta.team/

(Top image:  BETA Tech­nolo­gies)

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