April 17, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By THERESA HITCHENSon April 16, 2020 at 7:15 PM
WASHINGTON: ‘Flying cars' using electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology could be in full-up production for Air Force use in moving cargo and people within three years, says Air Force acquisition head Will Roper.
Such a capability, Roper enthused, would give the US military the ability to undertake missions “in three dimensions that we normally do in two,” giving the services “much greater agility.” This is why the Air Force program for investing in commercial firms now pursuing eVTOL vehicles is called “Agility Prime,” he noted.
The Air Force will take a first look at vendor offerings in a virtual pitch event at the end of the month, with a focus on small eVTOL vehicles that could be used for missions involving transport of only a few people.
Roper told reporters today that the size of any future Air Force vehicle buys would depend on what missions eVTOL vehicles prove capable of carrying out. “If it's helping us to do logistics at the edge, we could end up buying these in higher quantities. If it's things like security and rescue, it will be smaller quantities,” he explained.
Roper has previously said he envisions large flying cars for carrying cargo, as well as smaller vehicles for Special Operations-type missions.
But no matter what, Roper added that he expects that granting commercial producers Air Force safety certifications and allowing them to rack up flying hours under Agility Prime “will really help accelerate domestic use of these vehicles and [allow some companies to] get FAA certification sooner that it would have come if we had not interjected ourselves into the market.”
The Agility Prime program will hold a “virtual launch event” April 27 to allow vendors to showcase their capabilities and interact with potential investors from both the private sector and the military, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) announced earlier this week. Roper, who will give a keynote, said the event originally had been planned as a live demonstration of capabilities by chosen vendors at the annual South By Southwest music festival in Austin that was scheduled for March 13-22, but cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The objective of the event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector,” AFLCMC explained.
Agility Prime is designed as a “challenge” where eVTOL vehicle makers compete in a series of demonstration that ultimately could result in a contract for full-scale production. According to documents provided for potential competitors on the program website, the Air Force is asking potential vendors to be able to complete a flight test by Dec. 17. In the first round, companies will need to demonstrate the following specifications:
Roper said the second round of the competition would be dedicated to larger vehicles for cargo, and multiple people.
Agility Prime is a unique effort that involves a number of service entities working together, including AFLCMC, the Program Executive Office for Mobility, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) office, AFWERX, and the new AFVentures office that serves as an intermediary between vendors and venture capital providers.
Roper said that besides helping to move the US into a prime spot in an emerging marketplace, he intends Agility Prime to also serve as an example to the commercial sector that the Air Force is serious about being “a good innovation partner.”
One of the hallmarks of Roper's term as Air Force acquisition chief has been his focus on figuring out how to leverage commercial research and development to help DoD ensure that it can stay ahead of China in the pursuit of new technology — arguing that innovation is the new battlefield.
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/roper-sees-air-force-flying-cars-in-production-by-2023
August 20, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Both high-level leaders and Marines on the ground explain how they're pushing their ability to conduct distributed operations during Large Scale Exercise.
May 4, 2018 | International, Aerospace
By: Kelsey Atherton For drone delivery to make sense, with existing capabilities of drones, the cargo needs to be relatively light, it needs to have tremendous value, and it needs to urgently travel the last mile by air. This is why, to the extent we've seen drones used for delivery in the wild, it's more likely as a means to carry contraband into a prison than it is a practical alternative to the postal service. But there's one other cargo that fits the description, and that's blood itself. Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, the Pentagon's stand-up Silicon Valley-focused acquisition house, is looking for a drone that can carry a modest cargo of blood, through the dark of night toward where it's most needed. Call it “Dronesferatu.” From FCW: The specs of the solicitation from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental -- the ability to deliver a 5-pound package over 100 kilometers in “austere environments” -- strongly suggest that they're looking at an unmanned aerial vehicle system that supports refrigeration or other means of temperature control. “These deliveries, ideally automated, will provide essential items to critically wounded military personnel as quickly as possible after an injury occurs,” the April 23 solicitation states. “Ability to sustain a very high frequency of operations over an extended period of time is critical. Speed of delivery, reliability and robustness to failure and interference, response time, and overall delivery throughput are critical.” Getting the right blood to the right people as fast as possible means saving lives. To that end, DARPA's funded research into metabolic rate reduction to see if there's a way to make people bleed out more slowly, or into using female hormones to similarly prolong the survivable time without transfusion. In 2013, the U.S. Army conducted a study on pre-hospital transfusion for battlefield casualties being medically evacuated in Afghanistan, and in 2012 Canadian Blood Services even tested the viability of paratroopers transporting blood for transfusion. Consider blood drones complementary to this field of work. Early tests by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Uganda's Makerere University proved that small vials of blood transported by drone were just as viable as blood transported by car. Those same researchers followed up with a test of blood delivery from ship-to-shore, for possible use in response to coastal areas hit by natural disasters, where the roads are impassable but drones could still safely fly. The American startup Zipline demonstrated its own blood delivery drones in 2016, and has for a year and a half worked on delivering blood by robot to parts of Rwanda. DIUx's ask, that a drone fly over 60 miles and carry 5 pounds of blood, is not far off from what Zipline's drones can already do, with the company stating a range of 100 miles and a cargo capacity of just under four pounds. Weight and range tradeoffs are at the heart of aviation design, so it's likely that vendors have already pitched something within the bounds of the solicitation. Should that drone make a fast turnaround from ask to prototype to useful tool, the troops fighting abroad may gain a better shot at surviving otherwise-fatal blood loss. Unlikely that the reverse-vampire drones will look like bats, though. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2018/05/03/diux-wants-drones-that-are-drones-out-for-blood/
September 10, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
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