From Uber to Boeing, many of the biggest tech giants in the world are racing to be the first to launch a commercial flying car.
Now, the US Air Force has joined the race, having announced plans to develop its own flying car this autumn.
According to a report by Defense One , the flying car programme is being run by the Air Force Research Laboratory called Agility Prime.
Speaking to reporters, Will Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, said: “It was a low-hanging opportunity to broaden the team’s look into where commercial innovation is going in flying cars.
“And so I've asked them to come back with an acquisition strategy that has a variety of different options to pursue a competition” among industry.
Dr Roper revealed that the flying cars could replace the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircrafts currently used for special operations.
He added: “It may not be able to do the full mission as an Osprey, but you could imagine there being a lot of compelling options, especially in logistics.”
In terms of the flying car design itself, Dr Roper says that the US Air Force is looking at a ‘spectrum of options.’
He explained: “The task that I gave the team was to prepare a series of challenges from things that would involve smaller vehicles — maybe moving a couple of special aviators around to moving smaller logistics sets, ammo, meals, that kind of thing, into harm's way — up to moving heavy logistics, maybe weapons to reload on aircraft, all the way up to something that's a bigger system.”
The programme is expected to kick off this autumn.
