A three-month test of the battery-powered ALIA has the service looking to move ahead.
The U.S. Air Force wants to buy battery-powered planes after it deployed BETA Technologies’ ALIA aircraft to one of the service’s bases.
A final decision on when and how many of the electric conventional takeoff and landing planes the service will buy is a “rolling process,” but the service is “definitely on an acquisition path to get these into the inventory,” said Andrew Lau, AFWERX’s Agility Prime program manager. The program was launched in 2020 to propel electric aviation development.
The Defense Department, the world’s largest industrial producer of greenhouse gases, sees electric aircraft as a way to ease both maintenance and operational logistics in the Pacific.
“I think that the reduced reliance on fossil fuels and jet fuel in some of the locations might be very valuable [and] the ability to operate a reduced fuel footprint because the supply chain, just to get the fuel into some of these remote locations can be quite challenging,” Lau said in a Monday interview.
The ALIA aircraft recently finished a three-month deployment to Duke Field at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, where it flew over 55 missions, including cargo and logistics missions and a simulated casualty evacuation, said Chris Caputo, a BETA test pilot. The electric plane also completed a simulated “maintenance recovery team” mission and picked up parts for an F-35.
“When you’re in a theater or you’re island hopping, things like that, you’re limited by the number of parts that can be moved around, the number of aircraft that are in the field to support the fighters, for example, so being able to put them out there supporting the F-35s was a huge win for us,” Lau said.
The U.S. Air Force wants to buy battery-powered planes after it deployed BETA Technologies’ ALIA aircraft to one of the service’s bases.
A final decision on when and how many of the electric conventional takeoff and landing planes the service will buy is a “rolling process,” but the service is “definitely on an acquisition path to get these into the inventory,” said Andrew Lau, AFWERX’s Agility Prime program manager. The program was launched in 2020 to propel electric aviation development.
The Defense Department, the world’s largest industrial producer of greenhouse gases, sees electric aircraft as a way to ease both maintenance and operational logistics in the Pacific.
“I think that the reduced reliance on fossil fuels and jet fuel in some of the locations might be very valuable [and] the ability to operate a reduced fuel footprint because the supply chain, just to get the fuel into some of these remote locations can be quite challenging,” Lau said in a Monday interview.
The ALIA aircraft recently finished a three-month deployment to Duke Field at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, where it flew over 55 missions, including cargo and logistics missions and a simulated casualty evacuation, said Chris Caputo, a BETA test pilot. The electric plane also completed a simulated “maintenance recovery team” mission and picked up parts for an F-35.
“When you’re in a theater or you’re island hopping, things like that, you’re limited by the number of parts that can be moved around, the number of aircraft that are in the field to support the fighters, for example, so being able to put them out there supporting the F-35s was a huge win for us,” Lau said.
