Emerging Commercial Markets

Agility Prime, the Air Force Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) program, is advancing military thinking on how to drive competitive, collaborative markets. Hear from AFWERX Prime Division leadership on how they’re identifying and accelerating dual-use technologies for commercial success and defense utility.

What you’ll find out

• What’s happening with Agility Prime (2:15)
• Current areas of focus (03:00)
• Emerging areas of focus (10:30)
• How international partnerships bring value (21:33)
• Biggest challenges and how to solve them (36:00)

Key quotes

• “It’s been going on for about a year now. Incredible success that we’ve seen leveraging significant amounts of commercial investment into that eVOTL space.” — Tom Meagher, AFWERX, Prime Division Chief (02:36)
• “That’s really important to us to not just do one bespoke technology area that we’ve developed for one niche use case. That’s not really our end goal because we’re servicing the entire Department of the Air Force.” — Tom Meagher, AFWERX, Prime Division Chief (12:14)
• “As we look to pivot the architecture, there are just certain cross-cutting mission areas where we need to drive investment…Space power. Nuclear power in space. Internet in space.” — Darshan Divakaran, AFWERX, Senior Operations Research Analyst (17:35)
• “Now they’re coming to the table saying we want to bring our investment to the table and really partner with you. That’s a very different conversation now. That drives a very different business case for the Department of the Air Force. So how do we leverage that international partnership to leverage their resources to get after some future space capability?” — Lt Col Rock McMillan, SpaceWERX, Director (21:45)
• “When you focus on dual use technology, one of the critical things …is the trust program. We need to build trust between interagency, academia, the investors and the small business that we are here to see the technology move forward.” — Darshan Divakaran, AFWERX, Senior Operations Research Analyst (27:00)
• “One of our primary goals for Space Prime is to inform a make-or-buy decision…so when we’re talking to the investor community, it’s a dialogue on understanding which mission area can we truly commercialize.” — Lt Col Rock McMillan, SpaceWERX, Director (29:56)

Who you’ll hear from (in order of appearance)

Dyan Gibbens, AFWERX, Strategic Advisor

Tom Meagher, AFWERX, Prime Division Chief

Darshan Divakaran. AFWERX, Senior Operations Research Analyst

Lt Col Rock McMillan, SpaceWERX, Director

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