Korean Air has agreed to jointly develop a military version of Archer Aviation's Midnight electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for the South Korean armed forces, the two companies confirmed. Under the deal, Korean Air will handle South Korea-specific modifications, mission-system integration and local flight operations, while Archer provides technical support and shares airworthiness data from its ongoing FAA certification.
Why a Midnight variant, and why now
Rather than start a clean-sheet program, Seoul wants to modify a mature civilian airframe to shorten the fielding timeline. Midnight has already flown in evaluation activities with the US Air Force, giving Korean Air an existing technical baseline to work from, and Archer is scaling manufacturing at its Covington, Georgia plant with Stellantis to eventually build up to 2,300 aircraft per year.
Missions: MEDEVAC, resupply, special ops
The military Midnight is being scoped for troop and cargo transport, medical evacuation, search-and-rescue and special operations support. The civilian aircraft carries four passengers plus a pilot, has a maximum range of roughly 100 miles (161 km) and a top speed of about 150 mph (241 km/h) - modest numbers on paper, but valuable in a peninsula theatre where dispersed operations, contested airspace and short-notice casualty evacuation dominate planning.
Plumbing for Korea's wider UAM push
Beyond the defence program, both sides expect the joint work to feed into South Korea's civilian K-UAM roadmap, which targets commercial urban air mobility service by 2028. Korean Air said certification experience and technical data from the Midnight program could help Seoul develop its own eVTOL certification framework - a persistent bottleneck for eVTOL rollouts globally.
The tie-up extends Archer's Asia-Pacific defence footprint following the company's recent equity move to acquire parts of Boeing's Wisk and Insitu units for a foothold in autonomous flight - see our earlier coverage of the Boeing deal - and rounds out a busy month of eVTOL militarisation moves that also included the US Air Force's Neros/Archer Bandit swarm work.
What to watch
The next milestones are a modification-and-mission systems design agreed between Korean Air's Aerospace Division in Busan and Archer, and formal engagement with South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA). Program officials have not disclosed unit numbers or contract value yet, but the near-term prize is establishing the technical baseline for both a Korean military eVTOL and a domestic K-UAM airworthiness path.
Reporting based on coverage from The Defense Post, Chosun Biz and Archer Aviation and Korean Air statements.