Joby Collaborates with L3Harris “to Explore Defence Applications for Autonomous Hybrid VTOL Aircraft”

Joby Avi­a­tion and L3Harris Tech­nolo­gies recent­ly announced a col­lab­o­ra­tion to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties for devel­op­ing a new air­craft class for defence appli­ca­tions, reports a press release. 

Joby’s devel­op­ment of its gas tur­bine hybrid VTOL air­craft for the cur­rent S4 plat­form, fol­low­ing the acqui­si­tion of Xwing, has demon­strat­ed air­craft-lev­el auton­o­my. The VTOL show­cased an indus­try-first 561 mile hydro­gen-elec­tric hybrid flight in June 2024.

It is designed for low-alti­tude mis­sions and offers the ver­sa­til­i­ty of being option­al­ly pilot­ed, enabling both crewed and ful­ly autonomous oper­a­tions. 

The release explains, “The part­ner­ship lever­ages Joby’s exist­ing com­mer­cial air­craft devel­op­ment pro­gram and lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties, com­bined with L3Harris’ proven exper­tise on plat­form mis­sion­i­sa­tion includ­ing sen­sors, effec­tors, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tive auton­o­my.” The com­pa­ny is described as “The trust­ed dis­rup­tor in the defence indus­try.” 

Flight test­ing is expect­ed to start this Autumn with the two par­ties plan­ning to per­form oper­a­tional demon­stra­tions dur­ing gov­ern­ment exer­cis­es in 2026.

JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO of Joby Avi­a­tion, com­ment­ed, “We have worked close­ly with the Depart­ment of Defence over the past decade to give them a front row seat to the devel­op­ment of our dual-pur­pose tech­nolo­gies, and we’re now ready to demon­strate and deploy it.”

He con­tin­ued, “Our coun­try depends on com­pa­nies like ours mov­ing at pace, and we have the team, the tech­nol­o­gy and the plat­form to do just that.” 

Jon Ram­beau, Pres­i­dent of Inte­grat­ed Mis­sion Sys­tems at L3Harris, added, “The next-gen­er­a­tion of ver­ti­cal lift tech­nol­o­gy enables long-range, crewed and uncrewed team­ing for a range of mis­sions. We share a vision with Joby to deliv­er urgent­ly-required inno­va­tion by mis­sion­is­ing VTOL air­craft for defence needs.”

For more infor­ma­tion

www.jobyaviation.com

L3Harris.com

(Top image: Joby Avi­a­tion VTOL Air­craft)

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