FIA 2026: Archer Aviation reveals Halo, dual-use aircraft built alongside Anduril

Archer Avi­a­tion (NYSE: ACHR) has announced Halo, the com­mer­cial vari­ant of a joint­ly-devel­oped dual-use plat­form built to serve both defense and com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions. Anduril unveiled Thun­der, the defense vari­ant of the plat­form, on Mon­day at the Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al Air­show. The two vari­ants share the same air­frame, hybrid pow­er­train and core sys­tems, with con­fig­urable pay­load depend­ing on mis­sion require­ments. 

Archer Tech­nol­o­gy Stack 

This new dual-use autonomous VTOL air­craft plat­form, high­light­ed by its Halo (com­mer­cial) and Thun­der (defense) vari­ants, builds on eight years of eVTOL devel­op­ment and flight test­ing by Archer. It fea­tures a clean-sheet design, bring­ing the com­mer­cial VTOL sec­tor’s rapid inno­va­tion in elec­tric propul­sion and rotor design direct­ly into a per­for­mance-opti­mized con­fig­u­ra­tion.  

At the core of the plat­form is inno­va­tion in hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train and opti­mum-speed tiltro­tors: 

• Hybrid-Elec­tric Pow­er­train: A series hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train enables Halo to achieve sig­nif­i­cant range and endurance, while close­ly opti­miz­ing pow­er through the full range of flight con­di­tions. 

• Dual Tiltro­tors: Dual tiltro­tors vary rotor RPM to main­tain effi­cien­cy across flight regimes, reduc­ing pow­er demand and fuel burn in cruise and min­i­miz­ing noise for oper­a­tions in sub­ur­ban and noise-sen­si­tive envi­ron­ments. 

The tiltro­tor con­fig­u­ra­tion, series hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train, and rotor tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides this plat­form with the range nec­es­sary to sup­port glob­al self-deploy­ment. Alter­na­tive­ly, the air­craft can be packed into a stan­dard ship­ping con­tain­er for trans­port by air, road, rail, or sea, offer­ing the mul­ti-modal trans­port logis­tics required to reach where it needs to be. 

Designed for low-cost, high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion using com­mer­cial sup­ply chains, the plat­form behind Halo and Thun­der is built to sup­port broad deploy­ment, rapid pro­duc­tion and the scale com­mer­cial and defense mar­kets require. 

“Over the past eight years we’ve engi­neered, test­ed and scaled the tech­nol­o­gy this plat­form is built on. The pow­er­train, the bat­ter­ies, the motors, the man­u­fac­tur­ing. We part­nered with Anduril to take all of that knowl­edge and build some­thing new: a clean-sheet air­craft in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent class of range, speed and pay­load. I believe this is the most sophis­ti­cat­ed ver­ti­cal lift air­craft plat­form ever developed—it’s exact­ly what our cus­tomers need,” said Adam Gold­stein, Founder and CEO of Archer. 

Plat­form Capa­bil­i­ties 

Halo brings togeth­er capa­bil­i­ties no exist­ing unmanned air­craft com­bines: 

• Long range, high speed: Enough range to reach remote and off­shore sites, with the speed avail­able when nec­es­sary

• Heavy pay­load: Car­ries what the job demands in a mod­u­lar pay­load bay con­fig­urable per use case. 

• Series hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion: Deliv­ers ener­gy effi­cient, low-noise flight while low­er­ing oper­at­ing cost per mis­sion for com­mer­cial oper­a­tors  

• Autonomous: No pilot means low­er cost, no human expo­sure on haz­ardous mis­sions and high­er uti­liza­tion for more mis­sions per day per air­frame  

• VTOL: Takes off and lands ver­ti­cal­ly for access to loca­tions with­out a run­way. 

Com­mer­cial Oppor­tu­ni­ty 

Halo arrives amid a grow­ing need for com­mer­cial logis­tics to move heavy pay­loads long dis­tances, fast, into places with no run­way, at a frac­tion of the cost of lega­cy plat­forms.  

• Off­shore Ener­gy: Reg­u­lar resup­ply and car­go runs to oil, gas and wind plat­forms on sched­ule, with­out crew expo­sure over water, and at low cost. 

• Freight: Heavy, time-sen­si­tive freight flown between hubs, ports and dis­tri­b­u­tion points to loca­tions fixed-wing air­craft can’t reach. 

• Human­i­tar­i­an and Med­ical Car­go: Emer­gency sup­ply into dis­as­ter zones, wild­fire logis­tics and time-sen­si­tive ther­a­pies flown direct from freight hubs to hos­pi­tals in a sin­gle flight. 

• Mar­itime: Long-range autonomous oper­a­tions in sup­port of mar­itime mis­sions. 

High­light­ing this demand, Archer announced Marubeni Aero­space Cor­po­ra­tion as a strate­gic launch part­ner for Halo. 

Marubeni Aero­space is engaged in busi­ness devel­op­ment in the avi­a­tion and space fields. It is a sub­sidiary of  the aero­space and mobil­i­ty arm of Marubeni Cor­po­ra­tion, one of Japan’s largest gen­er­al trad­ing com­pa­nies. It has long-stand­ing expe­ri­ence as a spe­cial­ized trad­ing com­pa­ny in the avi­a­tion sec­tor, rep­re­sent­ing major inter­na­tion­al air­craft and heli­copter man­u­fac­tur­ers. The part­ner­ship will focus on joint mar­ket research, use case iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and future intro­duc­tion of Halo. 

“Cur­rent­ly, even in car­go trans­port oper­a­tions that do not require onboard crew, flights are con­duct­ed with human pilots, absorb­ing the cost, sched­ul­ing con­straints and human expo­sure that come with it,” said Satoru Nak­a­gawa, Pres­i­dent and CEO, Marubeni Aero­space Cor­po­ra­tion. “Halo’s unmanned, autonomous flight capa­bil­i­ties can address these chal­lenges, and com­bined with its excel­lent range, pay­load capac­i­ty and VTOL capa­bil­i­ty, make it a high­ly suit­able solu­tion that we are pleased to intro­duce and sup­port for our cus­tomers as a first strate­gic part­ner.”