DON’T CALL IT A FLYING CAR: AIR FORCE DRONE TRANSPORT DEVELOPS NEW IDENTITY
Hope Seck | July 5, 2022
In 2019, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper made an exciting and unexpected announcement: the service was developing an acquisition strategy to get into the burgeoning market for futuristic flying cars, maturing the technology through design challenges and possibly coming up with a platform that could replace the service’s CV-22 Osprey. In future talks, he provided a timeline: these flying cars could be rolling off the production line by 2023.
With that target date fast approaching, the Air Force continues to work on the base technology: an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) unmanned aircraft that may come in a range of sizes and support missions ranging from cargo delivery to golf cart-style transport that can shuttle troops short distances across ranges and training areas. But whatever it looks like and does, Air Force officials really, really want you to stop calling it a flying car.
Dr Will Roper
“We have shied away from flying cars, because that’s not what’s not what they are,” Lt. Col. Thomas Meagher, chief of the AFWERX Prime division, which oversees the development, told Sandboxx News. “It’s also not what industry is calling it.”
(Once again, Roper is responsible for starting and encouraging the “flying car” moniker. He told reporters at the Pentagon in 2020 that “now is the perfect time to make the Jetsons’ cars real.”)
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/dont-call-it-a-flying-car-air-force-drone-transport-develops-new-identity/
