USAF Wraps Up Flight Testing on Electric Aircraft, Complete with Casualty Evac

[rangerrebew]

USAF Wraps Up Flight Testing on Electric Aircraft, Complete with Casualty Evac
Jan. 29, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force and BETA Technologies finished a three-month stint of flight testing with its “Alia” electric aircraft at Duke Field, Fla., the contractor announced Jan. 29—which included several milestones for electric aviation within the Department of Defense.

Most prominently, the Air Force’s 96th Test Wing said that on Jan. 11, the sleek, quiet, fixed-wing aircraft flew a simulated casualty evacuation mission and communicated directly with Air Force aircraft for the first time.

The 413th Flight Test Squadron, the Air Force’s rotary wing test squadron, wrote the test and safety plan for Alia, which landed at Duke Field in late October. BETA continued to own and operate the aircraft.

In a release announcing the end of the “deployment,” BETA said Alia’s time at Duke was “the next phase of a larger developmental test and evaluation (DT&E) effort being conducted by the U.S. Air Force to assess electric aviation’s applicability for DOD missions.”

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/usaf-flight-testing-electric-aircraft-casualty-evacuation/

[rangerrebew]

They work on crap like this while troops are being killed because differences between enemy and US drones can't be determined?  It would seem protecting lives of the troops should have a higher priority.

[Smokin Joe]

They work on crap like this while troops are being killed because differences between enemy and US drones can't be determined?  It would seem protecting lives of the troops should have a higher priority.

[SZonian]

Don't denigrate the "testers" in this project.
We test crap because we're told or contracted to do so.
Remember, the US military works at the behest of our "esteemed" civilian government.
And so does our military contractors, who are constrained by $h!t ton of rules and regulations.