Joby Aviation appoints former JSOC Commander Lt. Gen Scott Howell to company’s advisory board

Joby Avi­a­tion has announced the appoint­ment of Lt. Gen. (ret) Scott How­ell, for­mer Com­man­der of the Joint Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand (JSOC), to its Advi­so­ry Board.

As JSOC Com­man­der, Lt. Gen. How­ell was respon­si­ble for the readi­ness and mis­sion exe­cu­tion of high­ly-spe­cialised forces across the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines.

As a career spe­cial oper­a­tions heli­copter pilot with more than 2,600 hours of flight expe­ri­ence, he will sit along­side Paul Rinal­di, for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers’ Asso­ci­a­tion (NATCA), and Dan Elwell, for­mer Act­ing Admin­is­tra­tor of the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion.

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby, said: “The U.S. gov­ern­ment and in par­tic­u­lar the Depart­ment of Defense have been impor­tant part­ners to Joby for more than five years, sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment and test­ing of our tech­nol­o­gy through access to DoD exper­tise, feed­back and facil­i­ties.

“Our col­lab­o­ra­tion is a vital source of oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence and near-term sup­port for research and devel­op­ment activ­i­ties, and, as we move clos­er to our pri­ma­ry goal of launch­ing a com­mer­cial aer­i­al rideshar­ing ser­vice, we look for­ward to grow­ing these part­ner­ships, as we draw on Scott’s broad expe­ri­ence in this field.”

How­ell pre­vi­ous­ly served as Vice Com­man­der of U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand (USSOCOM), focused on organ­is­ing, train­ing, and equip­ping more than 70,000 Spe­cial Oper­a­tions per­son­nel, as well as the organisation’s acqui­si­tions and bud­get­ing. Lt. Gen. How­ell served in spe­cial oper­a­tions for more than two decades and deployed exten­sive­ly.

In August 2022, Joby announced it had expand­ed its exist­ing research and devel­op­ment con­tract with the U.S. Air Force to include new test­ing to eval­u­ate Joby’s advanced tech­nolo­gies, bring­ing the contract’s total poten­tial val­ue to $75 mil­lion and widen­ing the Company’s defense part­ner­ships to incor­po­rate the U.S. Marine Corps.

Com­ment­ing on his appoint­ment, Lt. Gen. How­ell added: “The com­mer­cial sec­tor has a great deal to offer the mil­i­tary in terms of speed of inno­va­tion and insight into future tech­nol­o­gy. Joby is at the lead­ing edge of eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ment and I’m look­ing for­ward to sup­port­ing the team in demon­strat­ing the capa­bil­i­ties of their air­craft in a wide range of oper­a­tional use cas­es.”