Joby Aviation obtains first military airworthiness approval from the U.S. Air Force for its eVTOL aircraft

Joby Avi­a­tion has received the first mil­i­tary air­wor­thi­ness approval for eVTOL air­craft from the U.S. Air Force.

The news was announced today (Thurs­day) dur­ing the fourth day of AFWERX Accel­er­ate vir­tu­al event by Dr. Will Rop­er, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force Acqui­si­tion, Tech­nol­o­gy and Logis­tics Chief. It now means Joby’s four-seater pro­to­type will be the first eVTOL air­craft to pro­vide trans­porta­tion for mil­i­tary staff.

Agili­ty Prime is the U.S. Air Force’s inno­v­a­tive arm spear­head­ing its com­mit­ment to part­ner­ing with indus­try investors and help­ing to fund the cre­ation of tech­nolo­gies, such as eVTOL, which could be used for mil­i­tary mis­sions. 

Dr Rop­er said: “This is exact­ly the type of pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ship inno­va­tion the air force and space force want to be a part of. We want to make amaz­ing things hap­pen, not just for the mil­i­tary, but for the world.

“We are excit­ed to see what’s to come from Joby and oth­er com­pa­nies push­ing the bound­aries of eVTOL or fly­ing cars. To JoeBen [Bevirt, Joby Avi­a­tion’s CEO] and the entire Joby team, con­grat­u­la­tions. I can’t wait to see what’s to come.”

Com­ment­ing on the announce­ment, Bevirt said: “Our part­ner­ship with AFWERX and the air force has been trans­for­ma­tive and we’re incred­i­bly grate­ful for your sup­port.

“It’s been a spec­tac­u­lar first year. We’ve made some incred­i­ble progress and are so excit­ed about what lies ahead as we demon­strate glob­al lead­er­ship and advanced air mobil­i­ty.

“This pro­gramme has giv­en us access to facil­i­ties, resources and equip­ment that accel­er­at­ed test­ing, allow­ing us to prove out the reli­a­bil­i­ty and per­for­mance of our air­craft. We’re real­ly excit­ed about this next phase of the pro­gramme where we are going to be demon­strat­ing the full flight enve­lope while giv­ing our gov­ern­ment part­ners a front row seat into this trans­for­ma­tive new tech­nol­o­gy.”

Anoth­er com­pa­ny which hopes to receive its own mil­i­tary air­wor­thi­ness approval in the ear­ly stages of 2021 is Beta Tech­nolo­gies. Like Joby, the Ver­mont-based firm is mak­ing good progress with its own eVTOL air­craft, called ALIA, and CEO Kyle Clark talked more about the com­pa­ny’s devel­op­ments dur­ing AFWERX Accel­er­ate.

He said: “In my opin­ion, elec­tric avi­a­tion is the inevitable future of avi­a­tion — it can’t not be. Just the abil­i­ty to go ver­ti­cal, the flex­i­bil­i­ty, cost sav­ings, and it’s been used in all oth­er forms of trans­porta­tion. We’re now here with avi­a­tion.

“We’re at the test­ing phase of our sec­ond gen­er­a­tion air­craft, ALIA, and you can see the design is built around the propulsion…by design­ing the air­craft around the propul­sion, we end up with a much high­er per­form­ing air­craft than the oth­er way round and that’s the type of thing this pro­gramme enables.”

Clark also touched upon Beta’s infra­struc­ture solu­tions, which con­sists of a ful­ly fea­tured recharged pad made up of two 40ft iso ship­ping con­tain­ers. It has been designed to include a ele­vat­ed land­ing deck, hotel units for rest­ing crews and a con­trol cen­tre for mis­sion brief­in­gs.

Beta has already bro­ken ground on mul­ti­ple sites — from its head­quar­ters in Burling­ton, Ver­mont, down to Platts­burgh in New York state and all the way to Spring­field, Ohio. Clark con­firmed that this com­ing quar­ter Beta will be con­duct­ing oper­a­tional mis­sions between Spring­field and Platts­burgh Air Force Base.

“We’re on the cusp of some­thing super inter­est­ing, not just for avi­a­tion, but for the whole world to exploit this awe­some ben­e­fit of elec­tric propul­sion, advanced con­trols to put into an air­plane, the lev­el of tech­nol­o­gy today exists. And when we cross that with the lev­el of physics, we end up with a solu­tion.”

Com­ment­ing on Beta’s part­ner­ship with Agili­ty Prime, Clark con­clud­ed: “It is super important…from the air­wor­thi­ness work we are doing togeth­er, ground vibra­tions test, test plan­ning, all of these things come togeth­er to make a suc­cess­ful pro­gramme.

“With­out the air force catalysing this, we would be left with short­er ten­ta­cles out into the net­works that we know present­ly. That cataly­sa­tion of bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er as the air force, has real­ly enabled us to accel­er­ate some of that advanced test­ing.

“Every­body knows how incred­i­bly effi­cient the acqui­si­tion process is. There was the no BS; what are you going to do? We’re going to take what you guys have we’re going to help make that even bet­ter. That sim­ple inno­va­tion has helped trans­form the pace at which we’re able to do things.”

You can re-watch this ses­sion, as well as all the oth­er ses­sions dur­ing AFWERX Accel­er­ate, by click­ing here.