Once upon a time (last Friday), before the US had struck Iran and sent us all into an X-fuelled tailspin, a pretty interesting announcement came out of the tail-end of the Paris Air Show: Electra.aero (maker of the ultra-short takeoff and landing EL9 aircraft) and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works ($LMT) are teaming up.
According to a release by the two companies, Lockheed will help Electra accelerate development of the EL9 and find customers for the small-but-mighty plane—including the DoD.
“This relationship will accelerate our speed to market to bring the EL9’s transformative capabilities to our military customers,” Electra CEO Marc Allen said in a statement.
Little plane, big world: We wrote about Electra all the way back in April, when the dual-use company raised a $115M Series B to build out their nine-seater electric short takeoff and landing (eSTOL) plane—the EL9.
Back then, Allen told Tectonic that the military was super interested in the company’s aircraft because they are pretty quiet and need little more than a helipad to land. Electra’s planes:
- Use a combo of blown lift technology and hybrid-electric propulsion to take off and land in super-short distances. The EL-9 only needs about 150 feet.
- Are about 70% cheaper than a helicopter to fly.
- Operate on a fly-by-wire system, which means they can easily be made into UAVs.
- Can act as generators for things like EW and ISR. The EL-9 can provide 600 kW of energy on the ground, and tons when flying, too.
- Are pretty capable, payload-wise. The EL-9 will be able to fly a 1,000-pound payload about 1,000 miles.
If the wheels are still spinning, let us help you out: This is all really good for, say, special operations missions or extraction operations where US troops need a sneaky-but-effective way of dropping in or out of conflict zones.
Money, money, money: And don’t you worry, the DoD has taken notice of Electra. In January 2023, the Air Force awarded the company a $85M Strategic Funding Partnership to develop its eSTOL technology.
Plus, when we spoke to Allen in April he said they’d already received 2200 pre-orders for the EL-9, totaling over $10B in contract value.
Eye on the prize: It basically looks like the strategic partnership with Lockheed is going to massively speed up Electra’s go-to-market strategy with the military. Lockheed is—in case you didn’t know—one of the big five primes and has deep (and we mean deep) ties within the DoD.
Even though they lost out on the F-47 (sad), Lockheed should be able to help shape the EL-9 into something the military wants to buy. Electra says the defense giant will support them in everything from digital engineering to manufacturing, supply chain, sustainment, and global business development.