Merlin Wins $500,000 AFRICOM Contract for Autonomous Casualty Evacuation Demonstration

Mer­lin has been award­ed a $500,000 con­tract by US Africa Com­mand (AFRICOM) to demon­strate an autonomous casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion capa­bil­i­ty using a Cess­na 208B Grand Car­a­van.

The con­tract funds the ini­tial phase of AFRICOM’s Autonomous Casu­al­ty Evac­u­a­tion (CASEVAC) Indus­try Tech­nol­o­gy Chal­lenge. The demon­stra­tion is planned for ear­ly in US gov­ern­ment fis­cal year 2027 in Moroc­co and is intend­ed to assess whether Merlin’s Pilot autonomous flight sys­tem can man­age a casu­al­ty evac­u­a­tion mis­sion from ini­tial task­ing through to the return flight.

The planned sce­nario will include mis­sion plan­ning, autonomous depar­ture and en-route flight to an aus­tere casu­al­ty col­lec­tion point. After a sim­u­lat­ed patient has been loaded, the air­craft will fly autonomous­ly back to its des­ig­nat­ed des­ti­na­tion and land.

Mer­lin says its sys­tem is designed to han­dle route plan­ning, nav­i­ga­tion and con­tin­gency respons­es with­out rely­ing on a remote ground sta­tion or onboard flight crew. It is also intend­ed to com­mu­ni­cate with air traf­fic con­trol using nat­ur­al-lan­guage pro­cess­ing and to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing in accor­dance with its autho­rised flight plan if com­mu­ni­ca­tions are lost.

The Grand Car­a­van will be con­fig­ured with an air ambu­lance med­ical mod­ule pro­vid­ing oxy­gen, elec­tri­cal pow­er and mount­ing points for patient-mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment. Its large car­go door and flat-floor cab­in are intend­ed to allow a patient lit­ter to be loaded at ground lev­el, with­out winch­ing or spe­cial­ist load­ing equip­ment.

AFRICOM’s chal­lenge is intend­ed to address the dif­fi­cul­ties of evac­u­at­ing casu­al­ties across large areas where access to med­ical facil­i­ties may be lim­it­ed by dis­tance or secu­ri­ty con­di­tions. The com­mand is seek­ing autonomous sys­tems that could reduce delays in trans­port­ing injured per­son­nel and non-com­bat­ants while lim­it­ing the num­ber of peo­ple exposed to oper­a­tional risks.

Mer­lin said the air­craft-agnos­tic archi­tec­ture of Pilot could sup­port fur­ther appli­ca­tions beyond the ini­tial demon­stra­tion. The com­pa­ny has iden­ti­fied a King Air vari­ant as a pos­si­ble next plat­form, cit­ing its twin-engine con­fig­u­ra­tion, greater pay­load capac­i­ty and addi­tion­al cab­in space for mul­ti­ple patients, med­ical equip­ment and an atten­dant.

The pro­gramme builds on Merlin’s wider work on mil­i­tary auton­o­my, includ­ing a C‑130J pro­gramme with US Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand. Pilot has com­plet­ed hun­dreds of autonomous flights across sev­er­al fixed-wing air­craft.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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