Joby Aviation expands USAF partnership and will deliver two eVTOL aircraft to MacDill Air Force Base next year

Joby Avi­a­tion will deliv­er two air­craft to MacDill Air Force Base in Flori­da in 2025, as part of the company’s AFWERX Agili­ty Prime con­tract with the U.S. Air Force.

MacDill AFB in Tam­pa is home to the U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand (USSOCOM), U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand (CENTCOM), and units from the Air Mobil­i­ty Com­mand (AMC), along with numer­ous logis­tics-ori­ent­ed units. Per­son­nel will test and train with the air­craft based at MacDill AFB, on base and in the sur­round­ing area.

Joby’s Agili­ty Prime con­tract includes the pro­vi­sion­ing of up to nine air­craft total to the U.S. Air Force and oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies. In 2020, Joby became the first eVTOL devel­op­er to receive mil­i­tary air­wor­thi­ness approval for its pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type air­craft.

Ini­tial eval­u­a­tions have demon­strat­ed that the low main­te­nance require­ments and oper­at­ing costs, high speed, and low acoustic foot­print of eVTOL air­craft like Joby’s can enable a diverse array of DoD use cas­es. Joby will con­tin­ue to train USAF pilots and main­tain­ers, and oth­er gov­ern­ment part­ners, on this new cat­e­go­ry of elec­tric air­craft.

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby, said: “The ear­ly invest­ment and vision by the US gov­ern­ment in this crit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy is prov­ing foun­da­tion­al as we con­tin­ue our path toward com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger ser­vice. We’re grate­ful to our part­ners at the Depart­ment of Defense for their ongo­ing sup­port and con­tin­ued lead­er­ship in adopt­ing eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy.

“We’re look­ing for­ward to work­ing with units at MacDill Air Force Base as we fur­ther explore the poten­tial use cas­es for our air­craft, demon­strat­ing its capa­bil­i­ties in real­is­tic set­tings.”

At MacDill AFB, Joby will be work­ing direct­ly with DoD oper­a­tional units for the first time, enabling units to car­ry out rep­re­sen­ta­tive logis­tics mis­sions and test use cas­es in per­son­nel trans­port, casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion, and sup­port of secu­ri­ty forces.

Joby deliv­ered its first air­craft to Edwards Air Force Base in Cal­i­for­nia in Sep­tem­ber 2023, with a sec­ond air­craft expect­ed to be placed on the base this year.

At Edwards, the Joby team is work­ing close­ly with the 412th Test Wing on test­ing and exper­i­men­ta­tion that will inform future oper­a­tional test­ing at a sec­ond loca­tion, MacDill Air Force Base in Flori­da.

Bevirt added: “This work will pro­vide Joby with valu­able ear­ly oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence, while pro­vid­ing the USAF with first­hand under­stand­ing of the per­for­mance of our air­craft and its poten­tial appli­ca­tions.”

Joby’s long­stand­ing part­ner­ship with the Depart­ment of Defense (DoD) dates back to its 2016 engage­ment with the Defense Inno­va­tion Unit (DIU), which grant­ed the Com­pa­ny ear­ly fund­ing as well as access to test ranges and exper­tise that have aid­ed its air­craft devel­op­ment pro­gram.

U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps, and Army avi­a­tors, ground crews and pro­gram man­agers have made mul­ti­ple vis­its to Joby’s man­u­fac­tur­ing and flight test facil­i­ties in Mari­na, CA for ongo­ing flight train­ing and mis­sion analy­sis regard­ing poten­tial logis­tics, med­ical, and per­son­nel trans­port appli­ca­tions of the air­craft.

Since then, Joby has expand­ed its work to include the AFWERX Agili­ty Prime pro­gram, with Joby’s cur­rent and pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed work with the DoD rep­re­sent­ing a total poten­tial con­tract val­ue of $163 mil­lion, the largest in the indus­try.

Lt Col John Tekell, Agili­ty Prime Branch Chief, said: ”The Agili­ty Prime team is very excit­ed to progress through a nov­el acqui­si­tion approach,” said Lt Col John Tekell, Agili­ty Prime Branch Chief. “These two air­craft at MacDill AFB allow the pro­gram to take the next steps in learn­ing to max­i­mize the oper­a­tional oppor­tu­ni­ty of eVTOLs.”

Joby announced in Feb­ru­ary that it has com­plet­ed the third of five stages of the type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process required by the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) for com­mer­cial ser­vice.

The com­pa­ny’s elec­tric air taxi is designed to car­ry a pilot and four pas­sen­gers at speeds of up to 200 mph, offer­ing high-speed mobil­i­ty with a frac­tion of the noise pro­duced by heli­copters and zero oper­at­ing emis­sions.