As Elroy Air ramps up flight testing with a prototype of its hybrid-electric Chaparral cargo freighter, the California-based aircraft developer is preparing to demonstrate an autonomous resupply mission for the U.S. Marine Corps.
Elroy Air is partnering with Leidos, a Virginia-based prime contractor specializing in autonomous systems, to orchestrate the logistics demo in July at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona.
The Chaparral will be competing against Kaman’s Kargo UAV during a two-week fly-off, after which the Marines will decide which aircraft should become its next autonomous resupply vehicle.
Just over one year ago, the Navy and Marine Corps Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems program office (PMA-263) awarded Leidos and Kaman contracts for the development of an autonomous freighter under its Medium Unmanned Logistics Systems – Air (MULS-A) program. It has since renamed the program as Medium Aerial Resupply Vehicle – Expeditionary Logistics, or MARV-EL.
The goal of the MARV-EL program is to introduce an autonomous, “middle-weight” resupply drone to support Marines during expeditionary advanced base operations, with small teams deployed in dispersed locations. An uncrewed aircraft could provide combat sustainment when ground vehicles or piloted aircraft are unavailable due to threats, weather, or challenging terrain.
“Leidos is pleased to team with Elroy Air to bring this critical capability to the warfighter,” said Tim Freeman, Leidos senior vice president and airborne systems business manager. “Approval to proceed to test is a major milestone and is the result of months of hard work by the team. We look forward to demonstrating how the Leidos and Elroy Air MARV-EL solution will help deliver a logistics advantage to the Marines and other branches of the military.”
While the military represents one potential customer for Elroy Air, the company has already raked in around $3 billion worth of orders from commercial customers, including FedEx Express, helicopter operator Bristow, aircraft leasing group LCI, and Mesa Airlines.
Elroy Air designed the Chaparral aircraft to carry 300 to 500 pounds (136 to 227 kilograms) of cargo to a range of up to 300 miles (480 kilometers). It features an electric propulsion system powered by a combination of batteries and a 150-kilowatt turbogenerator. The C1 prototype made its first hover flights in November. Since then, the company has been expanding the envelope and picking up the pace, with multiple flights taking place every week, Elroy Air co-founder and CEO Dave Merrill told AIN.
“When we first started our hover campaign, we kept flights only on days when the wind was very low," he added. "The wind envelope expansion that we're doing now allows us to validate that we can safely take off and land in higher winds, so that'll open up a lot more days of the calendar to become test flight days.”
Elroy’s engineers are also starting to introduce some autonomy features to the aircraft, which still requires a remote pilot for now. “In early stages of our flight envelope expansion, we have a pilot more actively involved in those flights, but we're starting to kind of peel away the need for manual control bit by bit,” Merrill said.
When the Chaparral enters commercial service, which Elroy Air anticipates in 2026, remote pilots will still be required to operate the aircraft. “In the early deployments, there will be a single ground-based pilot with their ground control mission management station, a single pilot per aircraft,” Merrill said. “Over time, as we introduce more automation—and the airspace is permissive of more automation—that will fan out so that a single pilot can supervise a larger and larger fleet of aircraft.”
Following the fly-off with Leidos in July, Elroy Air will be updating the Chaparral aircraft “with a couple of improvements to get it ready for the remainder of the envelope expansion, where we'll take the aircraft all the way through to cruise flights,” Merrill said. Those updates should be completed before the end of this year, with the flight test campaign and envelope expansion wrapping up in mid- to late 2025.
A second Chaparral C1 prototype, now under construction at Elroy Air’s facility in South San Francisco, will join the flight test campaign next year. That test article will be a replica of the original C1 prototype “with the same or slightly improved capabilities,” Merrill said.