FAA’s Oklahoma V-PAR Expands U.S. VTOL Integration Test Infrastructure
The FAA Advanced Air Mobility Research Range is currently being developed at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, FAA’s research campus in Oklahoma City, and potentially becoming a key piece of infrastructure for electric and hybrid VTOL aircraft in the U.S. The facility is called Vertical Takeoff and Landing Procedures and Analysis Range or V-PAR and is expected to go live in late 2022.
Unlike many advanced air mobility initiatives, which are often marked by commercial aspects of their projects, V-PAR represents the significance of FAA developing a special test environment for larger VTOL aircraft. In contrast to FAA-authorized uncrewed aircraft system test sites, which are primarily aimed at testing of small drones, V-PAR is designed to test advanced air mobility aircraft, specifically electric and hybrid VTOL passenger carriers, where the main task is not the concept demonstration but operational procedures and data generation necessary for operating in National Airspace System.
And that is the point. In addition to the issue of designing electric and hybrid VTOL aircraft, there is an issue of VTOL and powered-lift aircraft arrival and departure process, interactions of VTOL aircraft with existing traffic flows, vertiport procedures, managing VTOL and powered-lift aircraft by pilots and controllers, as well as collecting enough operational knowledge and data to make safe entry into service of this class of air vehicles. And V-PAR is designed for that very purpose.
As stated in the FAA release, the V-PAR will provide researchers with the possibility to conduct research, training, and operational analysis of advanced air mobility aircraft. The initial facility is likely to include vertiport, covered hangar, and small control center building. The site will provide support for studying issues related to wake separation, downwash and outwash, radio frequency interference, and vertiport operations. All these are purely practical integration issues of VTOL and powered lift aircraft and not any marketing feature. They represent intersection of vehicle design, infrastructure, flight procedures, and safety concerns.
The comprehensive systems approach is particularly important in advanced air mobility development. Even when the developer has a certain aircraft going through the process of type certification, the operation of the aircraft depends not only on the aircraft itself but also on many other issues like ground handling, energy provision for the aircraft, pilots’ and workforce training, airspace procedures, and human factors validation. Having the specialized FAA campus for flight tests, data collection, and workforce development indicates that the FAA tries to eliminate one of the major bottlenecks of this sector the gap between prototype flights and scalable operations.
In general, V-PAR fits into the broader trend of federal government setting up integration of advanced air mobility into the national regulatory infrastructure. The FAA is already working on a framework for powered-lift operations and advanced air mobility into national airspace system and federal plans indicate the necessity of appropriate infrastructure, air traffic procedures, and safety oversight before expansion of operations. In such situation, the establishment of the special-purpose research facility is not just symbolic effort but the means of collecting operational evidence.
From the institutional perspective, the choice of Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center for this facility is especially important. Such location of V-PAR allows to integrate AAM development efforts into the FAA research and workforce infrastructure. That point will prove to be important in the future when the industry moves from isolated demonstration to test campaigns and procedures development and training.
Still, there are several limitations of publicly available information about the project. The facility is identified as proving ground for large electric and hybrid aircraft technology. But there is no information on instrumentation, supported aircraft classes, participating manufacturers, and capabilities of V-PAR. So it is too early to use this facility as a proxy for any certification timeline and predict which OEMs will use it.
Nevertheless, the direction is clear. The FAA is setting up a special environment for VTOL integration separate from the small drones test infrastructure and investing into a special U.S. research range for procedures development, flight test support, data collection, and training purposes. For the unmanned and advanced mobility sector, it is the important news: the safe integration into airspace system will depend not only on new aircraft but also on the infrastructure allowing to transform the platform into a certifiable and operable transportation system.
Stephen Wallace — Editor for AMI’s aerospace integration and unmanned mobility coverage, focused on drone manufacturing, VTOL systems, autonomous networks, and air-ground mobility links.
