Archer Aviation has revealed a dual-use, autonomous vertical take-off and landing aircraft developed with defense technology company Anduril, built to serve both commercial and military missions from a single airframe.
Unveiled at the Farnborough Airshow, the platform comes in defense and commercial variants, Thunder and Halo respectively. Both share the same airframe, hybrid-electric powertrain and core systems, with a configurable payload bay set up for each mission.
Halo is aimed at offshore energy, freight, humanitarian and maritime missions. Thunder is an autonomous attack rotorcraft designed to multiply the combat power of crewed and next-generation attack and assault aircraft, said Archer
Archer has been developing its passenger eVTOL Midnight for eight years. Midnight has performed 400 test flights. Archer said the work gives it a proven route to design, build and fly advanced vertical-lift aircraft quickly.
The new VTOL platform uses two tilitrotors similar to other military tilitrotor aircraft, instead of the six Midnight does. It features a series hybrid-electric powertrain, which Archer says gives the aircraft the range and endurance to reach remote and offshore sites while optimizing power across the full range of flight conditions.
The optimum-speed tiltrotors (OSTR) vary rotor speed to hold efficiency across different flight regimes. Varying rotor speed cuts power demand and fuel burn in cruise and lowers the acoustic signature, which the companies said aids survivability on low-altitude military ingress and suits noise-sensitive commercial environments.
The tiltrotor configuration also allows runway-independent operations from austere sites, said the companies
Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer, said, “Over the past eight years we’ve engineered, tested and scaled the technology this platform is built on. The powertrain, the batteries, the motors, the manufacturing.
“We have partnered with Anduril to take all of that knowledge and build something new: a clean-sheet aircraft in a completely different class of range, speed and payload. I believe this is the most sophisticated vertical lift aircraft platform ever developed – it’s exactly what our customers need.”
Archer said it has completed multiple test flights with full-scale “surrogate” aircraft for Thunder, and that its first flight is planned for 2027.
Shane Arnott, Anduril’s senior vice president of maneuver dominance, said, “Harnessing the best technologies from the commercial eVTOL market for defense is central to how Thunder will deliver operational value to our customers. The clean-sheet, dual-use platform that we’ve built with Archer truly represents a step change in capability.”
In addition Archer named Marubeni Aerospace Corporation as a strategic launch partner. Archer, whose Midnight air taxi is in piloted flight testing, expects to name further partners this year.
