UK company Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), manufacturer of the Airlander 10 hybrid airship, announced on 10 July 2025, that it is entering the US market with the establishment of Hybrid Air Vehicles USA (HAV USA).
The company noted in a press release that the establishment of a US subsidiary “supports growing interest from the US national security, aerospace, and disaster response sectors in Airlander”.
Although the location of the new company was not specified, HAV said that its president would be John Schumacher: a former naval officer who spent 16 years at NASA and serves as president of the International Academy of Astronautics.
HAV is currently in the final stages of planning for production of the Airlander 10, its first commercial aircraft, which is capable of transporting over 100 passengers, a 10-tonne payload of freight, or alternatively providing a highly instrumented cabin for persistent surveillance, reconnaissance and communications for national security, commercial or disaster response missions. The Airlander 10 production site will be located in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
Although HAV has no firm orders for the Airlander 10, the company reported in June 2024 that it had received more than GBP 1.4 billion (EUR 1.62 billion) in customer reservation agreements related to the airship, which involve the payment of deposits until firm contracts are signed.
While these reservation agreements are all civil aerospace related, HAV has also received interest on the military side. In September 2023 HAV announced a memorandum of understanding with BAE Systems to explore the potential of the Airlander in defence and security applications, while in November 2023 the company announced it had received a contract from the US Department of Defense to explore Airlander’s operations in enhancing logistics and maritime operations.
The Airlander hull has a relatively low radar return as it is constructed from fabric and helium filled, while the airships engines, which will ultimately be all electric and which are widely spaced, give the airship a low infra-red signature.
The fact that Airlanders are designed to fly at altitudes of up to 20,000 ft (6,096 m) means they could typically operate beyond the reach of man-portable air defence systems.
Beyond the Airlander 10, HAV is looking to produce a larger Airlander 50 hybrid airship design. This would have a 50-tonne payload and a 30 m long cabin that would be large enough to carry six 20-foot ISO containers and 48 passengers to a range of more than 2,200 km. HAV says the Airlander 50 could be available by 2033, while the Airlander design is also scalable up to accommodating a 200-tonne payload.
Airlanders are known as hybrid airships because they derive their lift from a combination of buoyancy, aerodynamics and vectored thrust.
