Archer Aviation is to acquire the Wisk Aero, Insitu and SkyGrid subsidiaries of Boeing, including the autonomous flight control, uncrewed aircraft manufacturing and airspace management software the former is developing.
The deal gives Archer control of the Generation 6 autonomous eVTOL flight test program at Wisk, where two aircraft are now flying after a second prototype joined the test fleet in May.
Wisk’s Generation 6 aircraft uses 12 propellers on a fixed wing and carries no onboard pilot, relying instead on a ground-based multi-vehicle supervisor for monitoring and intervention. Wisk has designed, built and flown six generations of eVTOL aircraft across more than 1,700 flight tests, according to Boeing.
Under a technology-sharing arrangement, Boeing will retain access to the core autonomous flight technology developed by Wisk for use on its current and next-generation commercial and defense aircraft.
Brian Yutko, Boeing vice president of commercial airplanes product development, told The Air Current, “We can now take all of the technologies and the IP and whatnot that’s been developed, and then focus them back on our core Boeing products.”
Insitu adds a defense business to Archer’s portfolio, including the ScanEagle and Integrator uncrewed aircraft systems used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. More than 3,500 aircraft have been fielded and the business supports the armed forces of 35 nations.
SkyGrid contributes a ground-based, aircraft-agnostic air traffic management platform, which Archer plans to combine with the autonomy software from all three businesses and its own ZEE artificial intelligence foundation model. The three companies account for close to two million combined flight hours, according to Archer.
Archer is separately working through the final phase of type certification for its piloted Midnight aircraft, having reported in May that it was the first eVTOL developer to close phase three of the four-phase process run by the Federal Aviation Administration. The company is building six Midnight aircraft for early commercial operations.
The two eVTOL developers were once in dispute, after Wisk filed a trade secrets lawsuit against Archer in 2021. The companies settled in 2023, with Wisk becoming the exclusive autonomy provider for future variants of the Archer aircraft and Boeing investing in Archer.
