While the Air Force has no plans to fund eVTOL development, it will help of electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) vehicle developers with commercial certification and transition to volume production.
The Air Force Agility Prime program office will lead the effort to determine, as eVTOL developers claim, that these vehicles can revolutionize mobility, and especially logistics. The Agility Prime Office will release a series of “Areas of Interest (AOI’s). The first AOI, issued February 25, is titled “Air Race Certification.”
According to Col. Nathan Diller, Agility Prime integrated product team lead, the Air Force will issue contracts to produce test reports. If the test report is satisfactory, then the Air Force could issue a contract for early procurement.
Diller added, “They can leverage that test report to get military certification that would allow near-term government use cases that would accelerate commercial certification, potentially providing revenue and data that accelerates the broader adoption of the technology.”
The Air Force is looking at an initial operating capability in 2023 and the Agility Prime program is scheduled to run through 2025.