Agility Prime Launch Marks Increased Government Support, Nationalism in eVTOLs
We have a new acronym to add to the list: eVTOLs, UAM, AAM, and now — courtesy of the U.S. Air Force — ORBs. Not only do we have hundreds of vehicle designs competing for the urban air mobility market; we also have organizations vying for the best way to define them.
The Agility Prime kickoff week, still ongoing, is certainly an impressive show of support for the industry. How big an impact will it make: on investor confidence, on speed of certification and deployment, and on U.S. presence/supply chain in eVTOLs 10 years from now?
Chris Timchak from Stone Point Capital, a financial services-focused private equity firm that has invested in Beta Technologies, gave an interesting market overview and answer to this question:
“I think we are concerned that there will be a ton of competition, and the corollary that we spend time thinking about is the auto industry at the start of the 20th century and how much companies exist today versus how many started back then from a manufacturing and design component. To mitigate that a bit, we think the market is big enough and there will be multiple participants and many successful designs, but the infrastructure is important to the entire ecosystem.”
“Our view is we think some of those medical, cargo, military applications are likely going to be executed faster than passenger applications due to certification and other processes. Public-private partnerships are going to important, and this event in particular, and the Air Force’s interest in trying to lead here is a great step in this direction.”
“From an investment perspective, one very quick way to de-risk potential investments is with contracts and commitments from well-funded, high-credit quality capital partners.”
Let me know your thoughts.
As always, stay healthy and safe vertical flying,
Brian
|
Brian Garrett-Glaser
Skyport Editor
@bgarrettglaser
|
|
| Agility Prime: Air Force Commits to Commercial Success of Air Taxis |
We’re most of the way through the week-long virtual launch of Agility Prime, the U.S. Air Force’s effort to accelerate the advent of eVTOLs in both commercial and military markets. (Shout out to the production team; great event!)
Big picture: As a potent dual-use technology with clear military import, the Air Force has declared eVTOLs a battleground in the ‘innovation war’ — and one they intend the U.S. to win, unlike the now Chinese-dominated landscape of small UAS.
Agility Prime is billed as an “air race to certification,” with challenge-like contract opportunities in various capability sets. There’s no built-in down-select; whoever meets the requirements moves on, and the Air Force plans to assist with military certification and offer as much flight time as possible.
|
- Area of Interest (AOI) 2: This new capability set seeks eVTOLs that can carry 1-2 passengers greater than 10 miles at speeds exceeding 45 mph. AOI 2 is targeting eVTOLs being developed under FAA’s Part 103 ‘ultralight’ category as well as 1-2 seaters like Wisk’s Cora.
- AOI 3: The last AOI (so far) focuses on unmanned cargo VTOLs with a max gross takeoff weight greater than 1,320 lbs, payload over 500 lbs, range greater than 200 miles and speed over 100 mph. Sabrewing’s Rhaegal fits into this category, with a 5,400-pound payload when taking off vertically, which will be unveiled on Friday.
- The Air Force aims to begin procuring or make a fielding decision on an eVTOL aircraft by 2023 — a timeline that matches Uber’s aggressive approach to commercialization.
- Civil certification: Agility Prime also plans to assist the FAA certification process of eVTOLs as much as possible, using military certification efforts and flight hours to accelerate commercialization and de-risk investment in the space.
|
| Canadian Organization Forming to Promote Commericalization of Drones, Air Taxis |
|
Vancouver-based operator HeliJet shares plans for service expansion, including eVTOL routes. (Danny Sitnam / HeliJet)
While the U.S. government and military make moves to support domestic development of eVTOLs, a consortium is forming north of the border with similar goals for Canada.
The Canadian Air Mobility consortium's partners span across government, academia, industry and the investing community, hoping to lay the foundations for advanced air mobility in British Columbia and across the nation, including drone delivery and passenger/cargo air taxis, with an emphasis on sustainability offered by electric aircraft.
Matching closely with NASA’s roadmap for technological development and deployment, the group is raising $1 million from partners — with a 50-50 match from Canadian federal, provincial and local governments — to conduct an economic analysis, develop operational and scenario applications, and then hold a demonstration event as soon as the pandemic allows.
Some of the activity happening in Canada by consortium partners:
|
- InDro Robotics has been flying medical delivery missions since 2014 and, at the request of Vancouver Island Health, is working with regulators to rapidly roll out just-in-time drone distribution of samples, test kits and machine parts to meet challenges created by the pandemic.
CEO Philip Reece: “It’s an ideal use case here because it’s short-range, BVLOS — none of those missions are over 12 nautical miles. It’s all going from a hospital, so a controlled environment, to a medical facility, many of which have got a heliport, and we’re transporting light payloads.”
- Danny Sitnam, CEO of HeliJet, is investing in eVTOL infrastructure and transportation networks in the Vancouver and Seattle, Washington metropolitan regions. He expressed great interest in civil tiltrotors like Leonardo’s AW609 as well as eVTOL aircraft capable of 100-400 mile ranges.
“The vehicle that’s displayed on this slide” — Joby Aviation’s S-4 — “is something that we’re considering, and any other vehicles of this caliber that are demonstrating long-distance capability, reducing our cost per seat mile, and at the same time bringing sustainability to our communities.”
|
| Are Low-Altitude Weather Services Ready for Drones and Air Taxis? |
Above: Results of a 2017 MIT Lincoln Lab study, commissioned by FAA, finding numerous gaps in the agency's ability to meet the weather needs of drones.
As the FAA continues down its “crawl, walk, run” path of incorporating drone delivery, passenger air taxis and other unmanned aircraft applications into the national airspace, development of low-altitude weather services and associated regulation needs to catch up.
|
- Low-altitude flyers — including current helicopters! — need higher resolution data than is currently available to avoid flying into isolated patches of fog, and the challenges are even greater near urban landscapes.
- As UAS and UAM operators move from low-scale demonstrations in ideal locations to commercial activity, consistent, precise and resolute weather data and decision tools will be critical for safe operations, and meeting customer needs.
- Better prediction and modeling tools, which require massive processing power, are needed for operators to scale up operations safely and make go/no-go decisions hours in advance.
|
Nearly 70 waivers have been granted for BVLOS drone operations, and none of them have specific weather requirements included as special provisions, according to Marilyn Pearson, FAA aviation safety inspector.
“We have BVLOS operations that may or may not have a visual observer and they have no specific weather requirements,” she said during a webinar hosted by the Vertical Flight Society. “So we don’t know what they’re flying into, and [the operators] probably don’t know what they’re flying into either.”
Read more on the weather challenges in low-altitude airspace and urban environments.
|
|
Sponsored by Honeywell
|
| Broadest Portfolio of Solutions for Urban Air Mobility |
At Honeywell, we’re constantly adding new UAM products to our huge portfolio of flight-proven systems. That includes propulsion, autonomous flight systems, fly-by-wire computers, detect-and-avoid tech, actuators and more. Tap into our global support network and our decades of certification experience.
We’re ready to fly. Are you?
Click to learn more
|
| Securing Airports from Drones Is a ‘Wicked Problem’ |
In 2018, the world realized just how much harm a tiny quadcopter can do, when one disrupted London Gatwick Airport operations, resulting in 160,000 missed flights and $25-60 million in lost revenue.
Counter-UAS systems, both for airspace awareness and actual threat mitigation, have proliferated since then, with more than 500 systems on the market.
But which systems work — and whose responsibility is it to secure the airspace around airports?
Government and industry experts joined a webinar hosted by our sister publication, Defense Daily, to discuss these questions. It’s clear that none of them yet have satisfactory answers.
|
- Leesa Papier, acting director, FAA’s office of national security programs and incident response: “We’re really anxious to see how we can support the development of efficient technologies that identify and detect UAS that are disruptive. But at this point in time — other than the testing that we have moving forward — we really don’t have any way of seeing what that positive or perfect solution is going to be.”
- Justin Barkowski, VP regulatory affairs, American Association of Airport Executives: “As airports, we have very limited capability. We don’t have the legal authority to mitigate or take down a drone. That’s limited to four different federal agencies.” (DHS, DOE, DOJ and DOD have been granted the authority by Congress to take mitigative action toward threatening drones.)
- Lisa Ellman, executive director, Commercial Drone Alliance: “There’s been a lot of talk about pilot programs enabling local law enforcement to test how this would work … Under the law, there can be data and information-sharing with state and local law enforcement, but there’s no deputization or ability for them to use that technology themselves. I think that’s something where we’ll see some action. It is definitely a big issue that would need a statutory solution.”
|
Speakers agreed that determining responsibility and authorization for airspace protection around airports is a “wicked problem” that will require joint effort by government and industry.
“Airports are not owned by FAA, so airports will have to come up with what they’re willing to accept as well, so it becomes a holistic effort on how we address this growing problem,” said FAA’s Papier.
Read more on the tech, regulatory & policy challenges in protecting airports from drones.
|
|
Some eVTOL stories to get you through another quarantine weekend:
|
|
