WASHINGTON — The Air Force’s project so as to add electric air taxis to its fleet took an enormous step forward Monday, as Joby Aviation delivered the primary such vehicle to Edwards Air Force Base in California for real-world testing.
AFWERX, the Air Force’s innovation cell, launched its Agility Prime effort in 2020 to work with industry to develop electric vertical takeoff-and-landing aircraft. Until now, the service’s work on eVTOLs has focused on testing the aircraft in controlled experiments.
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Edwards plans to make use of the Joby aircraft for day-to-day tasks, similar to transporting spare parts or other cargo or passengers across the sprawling base, Maj. Phillip Woodhull, director of the Emerging Technologies Integrated Test Force at Edwards said in an interview.
The Joby aircraft is able to carrying 1,000 kilos (454 kilograms) of cargo or 4 passengers, and may be flown remotely or by a single pilot in its cockpit. Meagher said it might probably fly as much as 100 miles (161 kilometers) on a single charge and at speeds of as much as roughly 200 miles per hour.
For the primary several months, Lt. Col. Tom Meagher, division chief for AFWERX Prime, told Defense News, Joby pilots will remotely fly the aircraft across the base and only deliver cargo. Because the Air Force gets more comfortable with the aircraft, he said, the service’s own pilots will start flying it and it is going to carry passengers.
Meagher said the Air Force plans to conduct distant piloting for the primary few months for safety reasons.
“As you’re developing a brand new form of aircraft, remotely [piloting] removes that initial human risk,” Meagher said in an interview. “It’s an awesome way we’re seeing in industry, of how they’ll test a totally latest power train, completely latest form of vehicle, without putting an individual in harm’s way as they prove out their systems.”
A second Joby aircraft is anticipated to follow next yr, and the corporate could provide as much as 9 aircraft to the Air Force under its $131 million Agility Prime contract. Joby will still own the aircraft, though the Air Force will eventually operate them.
Greg Bowles, Joby’s head of presidency affairs, said the California-based company first began working with the Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit in 2016 on electric aircraft.
“Very early on, the federal government recognized we’re at a novel time frame,” Bowles said. “Electric aviation goes to be a robust tool. We’d like to be sure that we understand it and be sure it evolves in a way that’s conducive for the U.S.”
Other potential uses
When asked about potential uses for the Joby aircraft once it starts carrying passengers next yr, Woodhull pointed to a roughly 240-square-mile lake bed on Edwards that’s used as an emergency landing area. The lake bed sometimes cracks because it dries or the earth shifts, he said, so Edwards personnel need to periodically check it to be sure the bottom remains to be secure to land on. The inspectors normally drive around in trucks, he said, and that job is perhaps done more efficiently using a Joby aircraft.
Edwards’ security forces also could use the air taxi to patrol the bottom’s perimeter, or it could quickly shuttle maintainers to examine on or fix test equipment throughout the bottom, Meagher and Woodhull said.
“We’re doing assessments of how it could be used, and what the suitability and effectiveness in that sort of thing could be,” Woodhull said.
Meagher said that is the primary time such tests have been done on an eVTOL, and that Joby’s aircraft was sufficiently advanced to take this step. Joby said this delivery took place about six months sooner than expected.
Other firms are also progressing quickly, Meagher said, and AFWERX is looking forward to conducting similar tests with their eVTOL aircraft. The Air Force has contracts with greater than a dozen firms to provide aircraft for Agility Prime, including Lift Aircraft of Austin, Texas, and Beta Technologies of Burlington, Vermont.
Bowles said Joby wants its eVTOL aircraft to operate commercially in 2025. Joby now builds these aircraft in Marina, California, and it plans to open one other factory in Dayton, Ohio, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Joby launched in 2009, and has worked since then to refine technologies similar to high-torque electric motors, fast-charging batteries, and flight software which might be obligatory to create eVTOLs. Its team includes engineers with experience at other pioneering electric vehicle firms similar to Tesla, Bowles said.
‘Torque-dense motors’
A serious challenge in creating an electrical aircraft is that the eVTOL’s engine must be consistently turning to remain aloft, Bowles said. That differs from designing an electrical automobile, which may coast at times and stops at traffic lights.
Bowles said Joby’s aircraft and its electric components are quiet, and show little heat signature within the air.
A part of the engineering on this aircraft included refining the form of its rotors to “take an enormous bite of air — like way greater than you normally would in a conventional aircraft,” Bowles said.
This permits the aircraft’s “torque-dense” motors to show more slowly while staying within the air, Bowles said, which helps reduce the aircraft’s sound. He said the Joby aircraft’s propellers can even tilt forward to fly, just like the best way an Osprey aircraft flies, and that using electric propulsion allows it to “do it in a way more eloquent way.”
NASA, whose Armstrong Flight Research Center is on Edwards, might be involved within the experiments at the bottom.
Teresa Whiting, a spokeswoman for the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, said the agency plans to work with AFWERX to seek out ways to securely fly such aircraft in on a regular basis use, specializing in issues similar to air traffic management and flight procedures.
“This testing will advance critical technologies needed for air taxis to fly safely in cities,” Whiting said. “NASA’s goal is to assist mature the technology to push your entire air taxi and drone industry forward and to share these findings with the Federal Aviation Administration to tell latest policy.
The Joby aircraft recharges fairly quickly. Most of its flights could be for about 25 miles and will recharge in lower than ten minutes. Meagher said a full charge could take lower than an hour.
The Joby aircraft’s electric motor can even require less maintenance than traditional vertical lift aircraft, Meagher said, just like the best way electric automobiles don’t need the oil changes a fuel-burning automotive requires
“The motors have one moving part,” Meagher said. “So from a maintenance perspective, from an operating cost perspective, that’s where we actually see the advantage of the electrification within the industry.”
The Air Force is contemplating dozens of potential uses for Agility Prime aircraft, a few of which might make the most of how quiet an eVTOL aircraft is.
For instance, the Air Force might use such aircraft to infiltrate and exfiltrate special operations troops into dangerous territory, or rescuing downed pilots or other personnel trapped behind enemy lines. The service fears that traditional helicopters could be too easily seen and targeted by advanced enemies in a future war, and has been on the lookout for other ways it could perform combat search-and-rescue operations.
“It is a huge milestone for the [Agility Prime] program,” Meagher said. “That is what we’ve been increase to over the previous couple of years, going all the best way from working with the businesses on their testing, getting a few of our folks qualified, to truly getting aircraft on the bottom to operate them with government operators. It’s an exciting step for us, in addition to our industry partners.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.