Skydweller Aero Successfully Demos Perpetual Flight

Skydweller Aero, the global leader in Perpetual Flight®, in partnership with the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), during July 2025 completed multi-day unmanned flights of its revolutionary solar-powered aircraft. This milestone continues our progression to an aviation platform which can remain aloft for extreme durations, powered solely by solar energy collected and stored in flight.

Our achievement underscores the company’s unwavering commitment to redefining aerospace capabilities by providing aircraft with extreme range, endurance, and mission versatility to meet the evolving needs of both the government and commercial sectors.

These multi-day flights are part of a larger flight campaign and was conducted with the assistance of NAWCAD, the technical manager of the Autonomous Maritime Patrol Aircraft (AMPA) Operational Energy Prototyping Fund (OEPF) from the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment (OUSD A&S).  This long endurance autonomous flight campaign is the first of two major milestones of that OEPF.  The second will be to conduct a Military Utility Assessment of the AMPA System in a relevant environment within the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility, in close coordination with U.S. security partners in the region.

“These flights mark a new era in autonomous aviation,” said Dr. Robert Miller, CEO and co-founder of Skydweller Aero. “They validate our vision of multi-mission perpetual flight, and showcase the dedication and innovation of our team. Skydweller is pushing the boundaries of what unmanned solar-powered aircraft can achieve by pioneering the integration of mission-ready multi-intelligence capabilities with extreme endurance – attributes that were previously incompatible – until Skydweller.”

Travis Vetter, Chief Technology Officer of Skydweller Aero, said: “We have accomplished a major milestone toward achieving operational perpetual flight by combining our proprietary artificial intelligence with advanced, high reliability autonomous systems. To augment these embedded capabilities, Skydweller leverages the massive global investment and innovation in solar energy, battery storage, and ultra-lightweight carbon fiber structures. Skydweller will continue to expand the operational capacity of our platform to respond to the ever-changing, dynamic environments in which our customers operate.”

Highlights of the Flight: 

• Multi-Day Autonomous Operation: Utilizing Skydweller’s advanced autonomous mission planning toolset, the Skydweller unmanned aircraft flew 74 Hours and 3 minutes as part of its July flight test campaign and flew a total of 222 hours 46 minutes over a 20 day period, demonstrating its ability to sustain extreme endurance missions within restricted airspace while avoiding hazardous  weather conditions, including precipitation, turbulence, and thunderstorm activity.
• Solar-Powered Flight: Powered exclusively by solar energy, the aircraft delivers zero carbon emissions with a minimal acoustic footprint.
• Autonomous Systems: The flight demonstrated the reliability of Skydweller’s autonomous systems, full Behind Line Of Sight (BLOS) take-off & landing, real-time decision-making and fault tolerance.
• Network Connectivity and Data Distribution: Skydweller utilized multiple, high data rate beyond-line-of-sight and line-of-sight communications links to provide command and control and distribute data to multiple locations. Skydweller also demonstrated communications relay capability with Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) configured and delivered radios.

Skydweller will make it possible to change the paradigm for surveillance missions, by offering a unique solution to current sovereignty challenges, greater security to NATO, the EU, and allies of western democracies.

This work is in support of the Monitoring, Analysis, Reconnaissance, Logistics, Intelligence, and Network Services (MARLINS) Task Order primed by SMX in support of the U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM).