Electra Defense Receives $4.7 Million US Air Force Contract for EL9 Testing

Elec­tra Defense has received a $4.7 mil­lion con­tract from the US Air Force Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry (AFRL) to test hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion and assess the oper­a­tional poten­tial of its EL9 Ultra-Short Take­off and Land­ing (Ultra-STOL) air­craft for mil­i­tary mis­sions.

The con­tract will fund a pro­gramme of ground and flight test­ing, with the aim of gen­er­at­ing per­for­mance data for the Air Force’s eval­u­a­tion of hybrid-elec­tric air­craft. The work will exam­ine propul­sion sys­tem func­tion­al­i­ty, air­craft per­for­mance and poten­tial appli­ca­tions in areas includ­ing dis­trib­uted logis­tics and Agile Com­bat Employ­ment (ACE), the US military’s approach to oper­at­ing from dis­persed loca­tions.

Test­ing will include ver­i­fi­ca­tion of key pow­er and propul­sion tech­nolo­gies, exten­sive ground tri­als of the EL9 pre­pro­duc­tion air­craft and acoustic flight tests. The lat­ter will assess the aircraft’s abil­i­ty to use bat­tery-only pow­er for low­er-noise approach­es and depar­tures, a capa­bil­i­ty Elec­tra says could be rel­e­vant to spe­cial oper­a­tions mis­sions.

The nine-pas­sen­ger EL9 com­bines hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion with dis­trib­uted pro­pellers and blown-lift tech­nol­o­gy to enable take­off and land­ing over very short dis­tances. This new con­tract is intend­ed to quan­ti­fy how those char­ac­ter­is­tics could trans­late into mil­i­tary oper­a­tional ben­e­fits.

The pro­gramme will also use mod­el­ling and sim­u­la­tion to exam­ine the poten­tial ben­e­fits of Ultra-STOL oper­a­tions. These include access to a wider range of oper­at­ing loca­tions, the rapid move­ment of per­son­nel and time-sen­si­tive car­go, and reduced reliance on con­ven­tion­al run­ways and ground sup­port infra­struc­ture.

The award builds on an exist­ing rela­tion­ship between Elec­tra and AFRL. In 2023, the com­pa­ny received a Strate­gic Fund­ing Increase (STRATFI) award val­ued at up to $85 mil­lion to sup­port devel­op­ment of its full-scale pre­pro­duc­tion air­craft. Elec­tra has since tak­en part in flight demon­stra­tions and gov­ern­ment-direct­ed test­ing, includ­ing AFRL’s Future Flag 25–3 exer­cise in 2025.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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