We told you everyone loves a tiny little plane. On Friday, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft giant Joby Aviation ($JOBY) announced that it’s teaming up with everyone’s favorite defense contractor, L3Harris Technologies ($LHX). The two companies say they will work together to develop a “new aircraft class for defense applications.”
“We have worked closely with the Department of Defense over the past decade to give them a front row seat to the development of our dual-purpose technologies, and we’re now ready to demonstrate and deploy it,” Joby Founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a statement.
The new plane will be a hybrid gas turbine VTOL—meaning it will be able to run on gas or electricity—and designed for low-altitude missions. It’ll also be pilot-optional, meaning it can run autonomously or be flown by a human. The DoD loves options.
Flying high: Bevirt founded Joby way, way back in 2009 (don’t hear that too much around here) to build eVTOLs that could taxi people around crowded cities more easily than helicopters. While a lot of the company’s work has been focused on the commercial sector, it didn’t take long for the DoD to take notice of Joby’s small, quiet planes that can take off and land in areas no larger than a helipad.
- As we’ve said before, eVTOLs can be handy for frontline operations where being sneaky is key (think infil/exfil and frontline resupply).
- Joby was awarded a super-early DIUx contract in 2016 to develop and prototype its VTOLs alongside the DoD.
- The company then moved on to AFWERX and USAF’s Agility Prime program, aimed at building out military VTOL technology. Joby was the first to receive military airworthiness authorization for an eVTOL aircraft and has delivered planes to Air Force bases, including Edwards AFB.
- Last June, Joby acquired the autonomy division of Xwing to build out its own autonomous capabilities. The company says it has “demonstrated aircraft-level autonomy” since.
- In total, the company has done more than $163M in contract work with the DoD and has a market cap of about $16.91B, as of this morning.
Joby is also well on its way to its commercial air taxi dream: Last December, Joby announced that it had entered the final phase of FAA certification for its eVTOLs and completed piloted testing of the aircraft in April. It plans to formally launch its air taxi service in Dubai early next year. This morning, the company also announced it had acquired air taxi company Blade for “up to” $125M.
Teaming up: The partnership with L3Harris means Joby will be able to benefit from the Prime’s “proven expertise on platform missionization, including sensors, effectors, communication and collaborative autonomy,” according to the two companies. They expect to start testing the hybrid military VTOL this fall and will participate in “government exercises” in 2026.
Joby’s engineers are already working on the hybrid gas turbine for its five-seater S4 aircraft, which it seems will be the frame for the new military model. The addition of gas should allow the aircraft to fly farther, carry heavier payloads, and increase reliability, especially in areas that might not have reliable charging infrastructure.
And this isn’t their first hybridization rodeo: Last June, the company kitted out an aircraft with a hybrid hydrogen-electric engine, which enabled it to fly for a whole 561 miles (up from ~150 miles for the purely electric S4).