eVTOL Range 500-1,000 miles changes everything.

Joby is developing a turbine-electric version of its S4 eVTOL air taxi. Credit: Joby Aviation

Advanced Air Mobility Aircraft Emerge As Contested Logistics Enablers

Ben Goldstein January 22, 2026

While commercial passenger services are taking longer than expected to materialize for advanced air mobility companies, the defense sector is shaping up to be a more immediate market.

As advanced air mobility (AAM) developers confront that slower-than-expected rollout, more are turning to the military as an early customer and revenue source. The growing trend is driven by the realities of contested logistics, particularly across the vast Indo-Pacific region, which has opened up new requirements for lower-cost, runway-independent platforms. As a result, hybrid-electric and autonomous vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) aircraft are becoming a pragmatic, increasingly viable option for the U.S. Armed Forces.

• AAM can fill critical logistics needs across Indo-Pacific region

• Smaller, lower-cost aircraft offer huge efficiency gains over large airlifters

What began under exploratory initiatives such as the U.S. Air Force’s AFWerx Agility Prime program has evolved into a clearer demand signal favoring the range, autonomy and flexibility offered by AAM aircraft. Created in 2020 to help advance development and commercialization of AAM vehicles, Agility Prime helped expose the gap between early electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) concepts and military requirements. While the initiative has ended, industry executives say it clarified what the Defense Department wants from AAM: chiefly range, enabled by hybrid-electric propulsion.

For most military missions, the Pentagon has concluded that battery-only propulsion is too range-limited to be viable. Hybrid systems combining electric propulsion with an onboard generator offer a way to preserve electric advantages like lower operating costs while extending range and endurance.

As such, a host of AAM companies—eVTOL startups like Joby, Beta, Archer and Vertical Aerospace as well as fixed-wing aircraft designers like Electra.aero and makers of amphibious options like Regent Craft—are pursuing hybrid-electric variants of their commercial platforms.

“At the very highest level, we are addressing a need for a lower-cost, attritable and high-performance aircraft,” says Kyle Clark, founder and CEO of Beta Technologies. “Speed and range are the key performance parameters, and that’s what we’ve designed our aircraft around.

“It also costs less to operate because they use less fuel and because they need less maintenance,” Clark adds. “Both of those reduce the logistics tail required for the aircraft, and that is a really big driver for this.”

Hybrid architectures also enable operational flexibility. Clark notes that Beta has demonstrated the ability to use its aircraft as a mobile power source. “The aircraft flies to where it’s going, becomes a short-term generator or power supply, and then flies away,” he says. “That’s not something existing platforms can do.”

Beta Technologies has partnered with GE to develop a turbogenerator for its Alia VTOL. Credit: Beta Technologies

At Joby Aviation, which is developing an autonomous, turbine-electric version of its S4 eVTOL in partnership with L3Harris, Chairman Paul Sciarra tells Aviation Week that pairing hybrid-electric propulsion with autonomy provides critical capabilities for defense customers.

“Each of the branches that field traditional rotorcraft are thinking about what the future of that platform looks like,” Sciarra says. “If you can build an aircraft that has similar capabilities, longer range, lower acoustic signature, lower radar signature and is capable of autonomous operation—that’s a platform that is applicable for a bunch of different mission types.”

The same logic underpins Vertical Aerospace’s effort to equip its VX4 air taxi with a hybrid-electric powertrain that is now being ground-tested ahead of integration onto a flying prototype this year. Thanks to the VX4’s larger cabin size, the UK startup says it can integrate hybrid propulsion with minimal airframe rework.

“We have the ability to go 1,000-mi. range, 1,200-kilo payload, silent takeoff and landing and no heat signature,” Vertical CEO Stuart Simpson says. “Militaries spend a fortune just doing ship-to-shore logistics on helicopters that spend eight months of the year being repaired because they’re really old. They can buy one of our aircraft super cheap, and it can do logistics runs 24 hr. a day, 365 days a year.”

If hybrid propulsion addresses range, autonomy can help scale fleets while reducing crew burden, cost and risk—particularly for contested logistics missions. “In contested logistics, it is a remotely supervised autonomous aircraft, because you’re doing a really simple mission,” Clark says. “You’re sending water, medicine or bullets over a hill to resupply our troops and get out of there. . . . The autonomous portion can operate in a lost-comms, lost-GPS environment, deliver that mission and return home without remote interference.”

For the U.S. military, interest in autonomy is largely driven by a desire to enable new logistics concepts that are inefficient to execute with existing crewed platforms. That logic underpins the Air Force’s growing engagement with Reliable Robotics, which is preparing to deploy its autonomous flight system on a modified Cessna Caravan under a government-funded operational contract.

Reliable cofounder and CEO Robert Rose says the Caravan is particularly suited to the Air Force’s push toward Agile Combat Employment (ACE), a strategy that emphasizes deploying forces across a wider area and operating logistics in a hub-and-spoke model. “ACE is about further distributing the force and being much more responsive to needs as they arise,” Rose says. “The Caravan fits this really unique gap they have today for smaller aircraft that can fly at much higher frequencies.”

Autonomy is central to that model, he adds, because it reduces risk to personnel and enables sustained, high-tempo operations using a relatively simple platform. “We can provide that capability with the Caravan, and we can do it uncrewed, so you’re not putting personnel at risk,” Rose says. “Because it’s uncrewed, you can fly even higher frequencies.”

Sergio Cecutta, founder and partner at SMG Consulting, notes that AAM aircraft can enhance efficiency across cargo, logistics and other missions, since the military often uses large and expensive platforms for relatively modest logistics tasks.

“It’s a little bit like having all steak knives,” Cecutta says. “If you really need to cut butter, you can use a steak knife, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right tool. The smallest fixed-wing aircraft we use is the [Lockheed] C-130, which isn’t small at all. On the helicopter side, the [Sikorsky] UH-60 is already large, and it’s being replaced by the [Bell] MV-75, which is even bigger.

“So these [AAM] vehicles come in with the capability of carrying smaller loads over longer distances without a pilot,” he adds. “It can help with this whole idea of expeditionary warfighting, where you can never have a permanent location because the enemy can wipe it out very easily.”

Several sources emphasized that military interest in AAM is broader than vertical flight. What matters operationally is not the takeoff mode but the ability to operate without fixed runways or vulnerable infrastructure. That underpins the military’s growing interest in seagliders—wing-in-ground-effect vehicles that skim just above the water at high speed while carrying significant payloads.

“We’re solving the same logistics problem, just from a different angle,” says Tom Huntley, vice president of government affairs and defense at Regent Craft, which is developing autonomous and hybrid-electric versions of its 12-passenger Viceroy seaglider. “The military has to move people and cargo across long distances in the Pacific without relying on runways. If you can use the ocean as your infrastructure, that changes the equation.”

Regent’s seaglider concept is designed to carry large payloads over hundreds of miles at speeds far exceeding conventional maritime transport while avoiding the infrastructure demands of traditional aircraft. Huntley says the vehicle’s appeal lies in its ability to support distributed operations without competing for airspace or runways.

“It’s not about VTOL versus fixed-wing,” he says. “It’s about how you get capability where it’s needed, quickly and reliably, in environments where traditional options are constrained.”

A similar logic is driving interest in ultra-short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft, such as the hybrid-electric EL9 from Electra.aero, which is designed to operate from spaces as short as 150 ft. The company argues that such aircraft could relieve pressure on larger airlifters by handling smaller missions, generating expeditionary electrical power and accessing austere or dispersed locations central to ACE concepts.

While AAM offers defense planners a way to move cargo across vast distances with lower risk, it offers something equally valuable: early revenue. Commercial operations take longer to reach scale and profitability.

“This is a lifeline,” Cecutta says. “Revenue from air taxi operations is not going to materialize anytime soon. Companies need other use cases to survive between now and then. Investors want to see revenue. Defense helps companies become self-sustaining—not just keep raising capital.”

Ben Goldstein

Based in Boston, Ben covers advanced air mobility and is managing editor of Aviation Week Network’s AAM Report.