US Air Force awards airworthiness approval to Kitty Hawk’s Heaviside eVTOL through Agility Prime programme

AFWERX Agili­ty Prime part­ner Kit­ty Hawk has been award­ed an air­wor­thi­ness approval by the US Air Force, which allows Kit­ty Hawk’s Heav­i­side eVTOL to enter its next phase of flight test­ing under air force direc­tion.

These flight tests will aim to explore the unique attrib­ut­es of the Heav­i­side air­craft and its poten­tial util­i­ty for both mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial use cas­es. This will be under the super­vi­sion of AFRL engi­neers and oth­er mil­i­tary stake­hold­ers, rep­re­sent­ing an impor­tant mile­stone in the joint project. 

The air-wor­thi­ness cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is only grant­ed after a thor­ough engi­neer­ing review of Kit­ty Hawk’s design and test­ing process and rep­re­sents the air force accept­ing the con­trolled risk of the flight test pro­gramme. This is a sig­nif­i­cant step in the devel­op­ment, which will allow exper­i­men­ta­tion and assess­ment of the air­frame to con­tin­ue through flight tests at the Agili­ty Prime and AFRL team’s direc­tion. 

Sebas­t­ian Thrun, co-founder and CEO of Kit­ty Hawk, said: “We are excit­ed to have hit this impor­tant mile­stone with the U.S. Air Force. The urban air mobil­i­ty land­scape is chang­ing and part­ners like Agili­ty Prime are at the fore­front of paving the way for faster, qui­eter and green­er trans­porta­tion.”

This announce­ment fol­lows on from AFWERX con­duct­ing its first mede­vac exer­cise using Heav­i­side, which is named after Eng­lish engi­neer Oliv­er Heav­i­side.

It is designed to trav­el 100 miles on a sin­gle charge and has sound lev­els of 38 deci­bels at 1,000 feet, the air­craft should be 100 times qui­eter than a con­ven­tion­al heli­copter and requires half of the ener­gy per mile of an elec­tric car. It has both remote­ly pilot­ed, and autonomous flight modes, giv­ing it increased ver­sa­til­i­ty for future use.

Col. Nathan Diller, Direc­tor of AFWERX, said: “Achiev­ing this air­wor­thi­ness autho­ri­sa­tion in the Agili­ty Prime pro­gram is a key mile­stone. This not only unlocks the oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin Air Force direct­ed flight tests, but it also shows the high lev­el of matu­ri­ty of this tech­nol­o­gy and the high lev­el of matu­ri­ty of Agili­ty Prime part­ner com­pa­nies like Kit­ty Hawk.

“This is the fourth Agili­ty Prime part­ner to achieve air­wor­thi­ness in less than a year, demon­strat­ing the abil­i­ty to scale inno­va­tion in Air Force Materiel Com­mand.”

As well as Kit­ty Hawk, oth­er com­pa­nies which have already secured air­wor­thi­ness approval include Beta Tech­nolo­gies and Joby Avi­a­tion.

Maj. John Tekell, Agili­ty Prime Lead, added: “Agili­ty Prime is proud to have achieved this impor­tant mile­stone with Kit­ty Hawk for the Heav­i­side air­craft. We are excit­ed to work along­side the Kit­ty Hawk team as we explore con­cepts of oper­a­tion that cap­ture new approach­es to air mobil­i­ty.”

Found­ed in 2010, Kit­ty Hawk has devel­oped numer­ous eVTOL vehi­cles in addi­tion to Heav­i­side and con­tin­ues to test numer­ous routes for­ward in devel­op­ing this ground­break­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Devel­op­ers and mil­i­tary col­lab­o­ra­tors are cur­rent­ly assess­ing a vari­ety of com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions for the Heav­i­side air­craft, includ­ing urban air mobil­i­ty and search and res­cue oper­a­tions.