We are creating a new form of transportation to advance the future of our civilization. Our story starts with fully autonomous, unmanned aerial vehicles.
Austin, TX
Joined February 2021
- Tweets137
- Following340
- Followers544
- Likes44
Pinned Tweet
This is not a prototype, this is not demo.
This is deployment.
Every mission flown. Every lesson learned.
All of it went into our next generation platform.
The first of the fleet deploys 11 / 26.
#Aviation #Aerospace #Defense
Skyways retweeted
@skyways is hiring a Flight Test Operator to join the team flight testing V3, our fully autonomous hybrid-electric VTOL with a maximum range of well over 1,000 miles and a maximum endurance of nearly 20 hours.
Onsite in Austin, Texas.
jobs.lever.co/skyways/ad5fc3…
To understand where we’re headed, look at where we began.
This was V1, our first aircraft prototype. While the aircraft has changed, the mission has always been the same: build a new form of transportation to advance civilization.
Soon, we reveal what comes next: the V3 B2 in its final form.
This Friday, the flight log stands at:
3,580+ flights
1,050+ flight hours
87,610+ kilometers
This is Skyways Flight Fridays.
Road to Deployment: Chapter 4 - Stress Testing
The first of the fleet moves from fitting to proving. The wings go onto the whiffle tree and bend under load while the shop watches. The tail bears a stack of sandbags, and the lift motors run on the test stand.
Flight teaches us what a wing really carries. In flight a wing can carry more than twice the aircraft's weight, as the V3 Block 1 flight logs confirm. The whiffle tree proves this wing under those loads on the ground, before it ever carries the aircraft in cruise.
Follow the first aircraft of the fleet, from build to deployment.
Soon, the full form will be revealed.
Skyways retweeted
We're hiring a Director of Hardware at @skyways!
@skyways builds and flies fully autonomous long range cargo aircraft. Our V2 fleet flies revenue missions for commercial customers around the world. Our V3 is in active flight test, with a maximum range of well over 1,000 miles, a maximum useful load of 100 lbs, and a maximum endurance of nearly 20 hours.
Now we're taking V3 from prototype into full rate production, and we need a leader to own the hardware that makes it fly.
What you'll own:
- Aircraft hardware across structures, avionics, power, and integration
- Leading and growing the hardware engineering team
- The critical design calls: design reviews, trade studies, system integration
- The path from prototype to production, built for manufacturability and reliability
- The loop between design, the production floor, and the flight line
About You:
You've led engineers across more than one hardware discipline and taken flight hardware or other weight critical, regulated hardware into production. You stay close to the design work, and you're at the flight line when something breaks.
The Good Stuff:
- $175K to $250K base plus equity
- Onsite in Austin
- Backed by Y Combinator and a $37M AFWERX STRATFI award from the U.S. Air Force
- U.S. person required (export control)
If that's you, or someone you've worked with, DM me or apply here:
jobs.lever.co/skyways/635bce…
FLIGHT FRIDAYS 0011
V3 B2 | The First of The Fleet - First Hops
The fledgling has no wings, no tails, no cruise engine but successfully completes its first hops at our Bastrop flight test facility under a @FAANews special airworthiness certificate.
Measured in seconds, a hop proves the vertical lift system works on its own. The team stays ready on the sticks and executes it again and again: lift off, hold, set down. This phase is about how the aircraft carries its own weight, how it answers the controls and how it settles back down. The next phases add the wings, the tails and the cruise engine that carry it the distance.
Stay tuned to see the fledgling gain its wings and get comfortable with flight.
This Friday, the flight log stands at:
3,570+ flights
1,050+ flight hours
87,555+ kilometers
This is Skyways Flight Fridays.
Road to Deployment: Chapter 3 - Integration to Hops
The team moves from ground checks to fitting the wings and tails, bringing the next Skyways aircraft together.
Flight teaches us that a clean fit on the ground does not tell the whole story. Parts can move into contact in flight, making clearance and alignment essential.
Follow the first aircraft of the fleet, from build to deployment.
In a parking lot at Naval Station Norfolk, the @USNavy handed a small box to the UAS crew. The Navy's Blue Water UAS, a Skyways' V2, flew it to USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78).
"Sometimes getting a small part delivered to the ship has a big impact on the availability of an embarked system or aircraft," said Capt. Paul Lanzilotta, then the Ford's commanding officer. Aircraft like MH-60 helicopters and MV-22 tilt-rotors were flying those missions.
The test ran on February 21, 2021, with the carrier in port. The Navy's unmanned test squadron, UX-24, ran the flights. Flying autonomously, the aircraft dropped cargo onto the Ford's flight deck, then came back, landed on it and took off.
Capt. John Bush of Naval Air Force Atlantic called the Ford supply demo "a first step in revolutionizing logistics support." In November 2022, a Skyways V2 delivered cargo to a ship underway for the same Navy program. . .
This Friday, the flight log stands at:
3,555+ flights
1,045+ flight hours
86,930+ kilometers
This is Skyways Flight Fridays.
Skyways retweeted
Austin-based Skyways builds pilotless cargo aircraft that lift off on four electric rotors and cruise on a jet-fuel engine, carrying 30 pounds up to 450 miles. We break down how the hybrid system works, where it is already flying, from Navy destroyers to Baltic wind farms and Okinawa's islands, and what still holds it back.
Road to Deployment: Chapter 2 - Taking Shape
The team moves from fit checks to bonding the airframe. Section by section, the next Skyways aircraft is taking shape.
Flight teaches us how parts move under load and where stiffness matters. Building the airframe with those lessons in mind.
Follow the first aircraft of the fleet, from build to deployment.
"We want to move to a world where it takes two hours. Everything is instantaneous delivery. That's what we're building."
That's our Co-Founder and CEO, @charlesacknin, in the @MyABJ 's September 18 special report on Bastrop County.
The Austin Business Journal visited our Bastrop flight test facility. It sits on about 1,000 acres, close enough to our Tech Ridge headquarters in Austin that an aircraft can finish on the build floor and fly the same day. We build it, we fly it, we go again.
This is what a vertically integrated OEM & Operator looks like.
That flywheel is how the two-hour world gets built, one county over from Austin.
Full story in the comments.
Read the full @MyABJ story here: bizjournals.com/austin/news/…
Skyways retweeted
This autonomous aircraft can already fly from Texas to Canada (if not much longer). Angel invested in @skyways early on and it’s been amazing to see the progress! LFG
Every Skyways aircraft is shaped by the mission. Every single spec the direct result of an operational requirement, failure, or friction point from 9 years and 3,550+ missions.
Now the next form is taking shape.
This series will take you on the journey to deploy the first of a fleet.
Chapter 1: Building Blocks: In Austin, the team gets to work.
Nothing on this aircraft was guessed. Everything has been earned.
#Deployment #Aviation #Aerospace #NewPlatform
Is today Pizza Day?
The supplies were simulated. The pizza was not.
A ship underway does not stop for a delivery. For the @USNavy, a Skyways V2 flew out from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, met the ship, and dropped the cargo. Performing a ship resupply mission on a moving target.
That was during the Navy's Blue Water 2022 demonstration: resupply of a moving ship, from shore, by unmanned aircraft. Over two days, the V2 flew between the air station and the ship. One flight that week ran more than 200 nautical miles.
The Navy called the demonstration "a first-of-its-kind mission to move supplies to ships at sea without the use of manned aircraft."
Two industry systems flew it Martin UAV (now @shieldaitech) and @skyways. Skyways was the one the US Navy selected to fly its June 2023 Fleet Battle Problem.
This Friday, the flight log stands at:
3,550+ flights
1,040+ flight hours
86,835+ kilometers
This is Skyways Flight Fridays.
Skyways retweeted
Our new aircraft is being unveiled. Years in the making. Years of flight testing across 3 generations of V3 alone. All leveraging everything we’ve learned flying V2 with our customers on 3 continents, with the same avionics and software that we know works.
It will be one of the most capable unmanned aircraft on the planet, if not the most.
Every Skyways aircraft is shaped by the mission. Every single spec the direct result of an operational requirement, failure, or friction point from 9 years and 3,550+ missions.
Now the next form is taking shape.
This series will take you on the journey to deploy the first of a fleet.
Chapter 1: Building Blocks: In Austin, the team gets to work.
Nothing on this aircraft was guessed. Everything has been earned.
#Deployment #Aviation #Aerospace #NewPlatform
Every Skyways aircraft is shaped by the mission. Every single spec the direct result of an operational requirement, failure, or friction point from 9 years and 3,550+ missions.
Now the next form is taking shape.
This series will take you on the journey to deploy the first of a fleet.
Chapter 1: Building Blocks: In Austin, the team gets to work.
Nothing on this aircraft was guessed. Everything has been earned.
#Deployment #Aviation #Aerospace #NewPlatform
Drew Talley, Skyways' Head of Flight Operations, has been named to the Unmanned Safety Institute's first Industry Advisory Board.
USI has spent more than a decade training thousands of students for the UAS workforce. Its twelve inaugural board members will help keep that training aligned with what employers need and what operators encounter on the job.
Drew brings experience from the U.S. Army and years of UAS operations over pipelines and energy infrastructure. He joined Skyways as a Senior Flight Operator last November and was leading the department by June.
Skyways has been flying autonomously since 2017. Its in-house flight-operations software, SkyNav, is built so a single operator can supervise many aircraft at once. Operators run every mission through it, complete a checklist before each flight, and make the decision to launch.
Drew hires and leads the operators this training is designed to prepare. He'll bring that experience to USI's board.
Congratulations, Drew Talley.
Skyways retweeted
I think cargo drones get way more interesting the moment the customer stops being another drone company / defense demo and becomes a boring logistics giant.
DSV is putting @skyways autonomous aircraft into offshore logistics in the North Sea this fall.
and the architecture is almost the opposite of the tiny battery-delivery-drone direction:
V2:
450 mile range
~8 hour endurance
30 lb payload
Jet A-1 / JP-5
V3 in testing:
1,000+ mile range
~20 hour endurance
100 lb payload
basically a small autonomous airplane optimized around the question:
what cargo is expensive enough to move that sending an aircraft is cheaper than waiting for a ship/helicopter/truck?
offshore wind + oil rigs are such a good proving ground for this.
A €300 replacement part can hold up equipment worth millions, while the destination is literally sitting in the ocean.
And I really like the deployment model here: Skyways supplies aircraft + autonomy + training + maintenance support. DSV supplies local flight staff and works the regulatory problem.
That's probably how autonomous aviation actually scales.
not “remove every human.”
make one human capable of operating an absurd amount of aviation.
ALT #AutonomousAviation #CargoDrones #AutonomousAircraft #UAVs #DroneLogistics #OffshoreLogistics #MiddleMile #FlightAutonomy #AutonomousLogistics #AviationTech
PARTNERSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT
@skyways is partnering with @DSV_global, the world’s largest freight forwarding and logistics company, on commercial logistics for offshore energy operations.
DSV selected Skyways after an extensive market evaluation, citing our aircraft’s range, payload capacity and operational maturity.
The initial deployment from Norden, Germany, this fall will introduce the German North Sea’s first commercial long-range autonomous resupply service, bringing critical equipment and supplies to offshore wind turbines and energy platforms on demand.
We expect the service to scale as V3 B2 is deployed.
Visit the comments section to read the full announcement.
#Aviation #Logistics
