In the race to become the first commercial electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) operator at scale, Archer Aviation closed out Q4 2025 with significant strategic moves. In November, the company announced the acquisition of Hawthorne Airport in Los Angeles for $126 million, securing a strategic hub ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics.
At the same time, Archer, like several of its competitors in the advanced air mobility (AAM) space, took firm steps to strengthen its position in the defense segment. The company built upon the December 2024 launch of its defense division by signing a partnership with Anduril, one of the most prominent players in the new defense tech ecosystem.
Archer has also reinforced its commitment to Abu Dhabi as a likely location for launching its Midnight eVTOL pending certification. It is precisely in the United Arab Emirates that AeroTime had the chance to speak with Nikhil Goel, Archer’s Chief Commercial Officer.
“We’ve been focusing on three or four core areas,” Goel said. “The first one has been flight tests. We’re nearing the final stages of our CTOL [conventional takeoff and landing] test campaign in the United States. We started with our VTOL [vertical takeoff and landing flight test campaign with our autonomous aircraft, and between that and our first CTOL aircraft, we have performed over 500 flight tests last year.”
“So, we’ve been continuing to accelerate this flight test campaign and that’s been going really well,” Goel added.“ We’re doing that in partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration, and we’ve been really lucky to have received really deep engagement from the FAA, even throughout the US government shutdown, which is now over, as we have continued our flight test campaign and our certification work.”
Goel also said that Archer is really pleased with the progress being made in the US, particularly when it comes to the launch of the Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Integration Pilot Program, also known as eIPP.
Archer is one of five projects that will participate in the initiative launched earlier in 2025 by the Trump administration, which aims to nurture the nascent advanced air mobility technology in the US and accelerate its rollout. Goel stated that he expects this integration pilot program to facilitate the launch of electric air taxis in the US airspace by mid-2026.
“What that does is a few things,” he said. “It really unlocks our ability to start flying in more visible ways, and I think it’s going to also have a profoundly accelerating effect on the overall regulatory landscape.”
He added: “We’re going to work really closely with the FAA and the Department of Transportation, and I think that the benefits of that are going to resonate all over the world. We’ve already started to see that here in the UAE, with the GCA [the UAE aviation authority – ed. note], the focus is largely similar,” Goel continued.
At this point, Goel added the caveat that the aforementioned “mid-next year” scenario would still be pre-certification and refers to flights conducted under the pilot flight program, not regular commercial flights. These test flights, Goel said, will help Archer gain experience in real urban environments and pick its final markets.
Investing in Abu Dhabi
When it comes to the UAE, Goel explained that after bringing the first aircraft to the country in the summer of 2025, the focus during the second half of 2025 has been on hot weather testing and slowly ramping up the flight envelope.
Goel referenced the fact that Archer has already conducted some demonstration flights in Abu Dhabi.
“That was really important for us because we showcased operating at one of the busiest airports in the country and over one of the big national landmarks [Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Grand Mosque – ed. note] in front of a bunch of VIPs, partners, and government officials that we work with here.”
Archer has also been testing its eVTOL in Al Ain, a city located around 100 miles east of Abu Dhabi, subjecting the aircraft to hot and sandy desert conditions.
“The good news is our technical teams and our flight test teams have been really satisfied with the aircraft’s performance here in the UAE,” Goel said, “and that is giving us the confidence to bring additional aircraft here to the country next year and ultimately put passengers in those aircraft.”
So, what is the expected timeframe for hypothetical UAE certification?
“We have not publicized a specific timeline. I think the GCA has previously spoken about different timelines that they’re on for next year,” Goel said. “Our focus is on operating as frequently as we can, as safely as we can, and the GCA has been an incredible partner in that.”
“They’ve spent a lot of time in our offices,” he continued. “We’ve spent a lot of time in their offices, bringing our full technical teams, our operational teams and our flight test teams here to the country, and I think it’s one of the most special collaborations we have anywhere in the world.”
Archer’s plans in the UAE go beyond being just an operator. Goel also elaborated on the firm’s industrial plans for Abu Dhabi.
“The agreement we have the Abu Dhabi Investment Office envisions continuing to help build the talent base here over time, help bring technology to the country as well,” he said. “And then, what that has done is really catalyze demand from all over the region. So, some of the largest countries across the Middle East have come to us and said, ‘hey, what you guys are doing Abu Dhabi is special. We want to bring that to our cities and to our countries as well’. We have opened up our office here and have started to hire local talent, both on the operations side and engineering sides.”
Collaboration with Anduril and EDGE Group
At the 2025 edition of the Dubai Airshow, Archer announced a partnership with Anduril by which it will supply its proprietary electric powertrain for ‘Omen’, a military hover-to-cruise autonomous air vehicle which Anduril is developing together with UAE defense company EDGE Group.
“These are parallel efforts. We’ve been working with the US armed forces for quite a bit. With the Air Force, we participated in a number of research projects with them to be able to showcase the benefits of this electric air taxi technology,” Goel explained. “We announced a landmark partnership with Anduril, which is one of the leading defense tech companies in the world, founded by a very visionary entrepreneur. What we announced was a project to take our proprietary technologies and jointly develop a new aircraft.”
This new aircraft will be hybrid-electric, autonomous and replace legacy technologies developed in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Goel affirmed, specifically naming the Apache and Blackhawk helicopters, which are currently two mainstays of the US helicopter fleet.
Asked about what this new aircraft would look like and whether it would be significantly different from the aircraft Archer is currently testing, Goel stated that it will leverage aspects of the company’s proprietary powertrain solution and other pieces of the Archer tech stack.
“That same team is building a variant of the aircraft that is going to be jointly designed with Anduril,” he added. “But will focus on the operational needs of the customers.”
Goel said that Archer hasn’t publicized the exact missions this new aircraft will fulfill, but he did offer hints about some of its key selling points for military applications.
“First, it’s going to be hybrid-electric, so what that allows us to do is maintain a low thermal and acoustic signature, which is really important if you think about some of the deterrence efforts that we have towards our enemies,” he explained “Second, because of that hybrid electric powertrain, it’s going to be able to have significantly longer range and higher payload than our Midnight aircraft [Archer’s original battery-electric eVTOL model – ed. note], and that’s going to start to fit some of these use cases that are really important to our customers all over the world.”
So, what is unique about Omen? And what does Archer bring to the partnership?
“What Palmer Luckey and Shannon Arnott and the team at Anduril have designed is very unique, allowing you to take off and land from anywhere,” Goel said. “They’ve been working on this project for five years. One of the blockers was around the powertrain technology and, through this tie up with Archer, we concluded that you could take the battery propulsion technology from Midnight and have a bit plug and play with it.”
Goel also highlighted the participation of EDGE Group, which strengthens the company’s strategic footprint in the UAE.
“So, we started working on that project, and we were really proud to be able to not just build that with Anduril, but also with EDGE Group, which is a leading defense company here in the UAE,” he said. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to continue that partnership here in the UAE. What that does for Archer is it opens a new business line. We can then take that powertrain technology and bring it to next generation civil and defense customers.”
This line of business is also attractive to Archer as it has a more flexible path to market because defense customers are not encumbered by the same regulatory obstacles as those in civilian aviation.
“Defense is pretty independent. You don’t require FAA certification for defense work, and those customers are on different timetables from a purchasing standpoint,” Goel said. “I just think of them as two very different lines of business. Both have massive opportunities, and they’re both on their independent timelines with independent stakeholders.”
Los Angeles as Archer’s focus market
There was also time to discuss one of Archer’s flagship projects: the acquisition of Hawthorne Airport, in the Greater LA area, a city in which it is also expected to play a prominent role in 2028 as official air mobility partner of the 2028 Summer Olympics.
“We’ve talked about a number of markets in the US: San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. All three of those are going to be phenomenal markets. Los Angeles is special in a few ways. It is by far one of the most congested cities in the world; it’s incredibly complex, and it’s incredibly sprawling. It can take two hours or even longer to drive from one end to the other of LA,” Goel explained, before going on to compare distances within LA to those found within the major centers of population in the UAE, such as Abu Dhabi to Ras Al Khaimah.
“Our view is that if you learn to operate in the Los Angeles airspace and serve those routes, you can then scale across the US,” he continued. “The second is that LA is going to be home to some of the most iconic events over the next several years: the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and then, of course, the Olympics in 2028. We were chosen to be the exclusive air taxi partner for the Olympics and that’s really given us not just a local mandate, but a national mandate to make sure that we can be prepared for the safe and efficient transportation for VIPs, athletes, and emergencies during the Olympic Games. That’s something we’ve been really, really focused on.”
While clarifying that Hawthorne Airport will remain a municipal property following its acquisition, Goel revealed that it will be managed by Archer.
“It’s the key airport in the city. It’s located right in the heart of Los Angeles, next to Space X, next to LAX airport, next to SoFi stadium,” he said. “And we are excited to make that the control center for the Olympics too.”