The U.S. Air Force has paid Archer Aviation nearly $1 million for the delivery of a mobile flight simulator, the California-based eVTOL aircraft developer announced Wednesday. This is the first of many payments that Archer will receive from the USAF over the next five years under its recently announced defense contracts, which the company says are worth up to $142 million.
Archer has been working with the Department of Defense since 2021 to explore potential military use cases for eVTOL vehicles such as Midnight, a five-seat aircraft that the company plans to have certified for commercial air taxi operations in 2025.
As part of the latest Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase III contract, Archer has agreed to deliver up to six Midnight aircraft to the USAF for research and training purposes. The company says it will work together with the USAF to train pilots on the Midnight flight simulator before progressing to piloted flight tests.
In the meantime, Archer is preparing for its own flight test campaign with the Midnight aircraft. While the company has been flying with its two-seat Maker technology demonstrator for the past two years, the updated Midnight model it revealed last fall has yet to complete its first hover tests. Nikhil Goel, Archer’s chief commercial officer, told AIN that Midnight “will be flying imminently,” and that Maker is still flying “every single day, multiple times a day.”
The company has set up a low-rate production facility near its San Jose headquarters to scale its initial fleet, some of which it will use for FAA certification testing. For future large-scale production, it is building a 350,000-square-foot manufacturing facility near Covington Municipal Airport in Georgia.
In addition to the Midnight aircraft and simulator, Archer is working on some other deliverables under its defense contracts, including wind tunnel testing reports, project-specific certification plans, and subject-specific certification plans that it is filing with the FAA.
“To see our historic contract with the U.S. Air Force move from signature to execution at a rapid pace is a reflection of the strong commitment that the U.S. Department of Defense has made to securing our country's future by investing in transformational technology,” said Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein.
Last week, Archer reported that it has joined the city of Miami's advanced air mobility working group. Since 2021, the Florida city's mayor Francis Suarez has been pressing plans to integrate eVTOL air services with the existing public transportation network in the wider Miami-Dade county. Rival eVTOL vehicle developers Lilium and Volocopter have also indicated they have plans to enter the Florida market.
