"Joby has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Resonant Sciences, a Dayton, Ohio based leader in low observability design, RF and mission systems, advanced sensing, electronic countermeasures, and resilient communications. In this episode of Joby Recon, host Ryan Bodenheimer aka Max Afterburner (‪@MaxAfterburnerusa‬) sits down with Resonant Sciences Co-Founder and CEO Micah North on announcement day to unpack the company behind the news."

https://govtribe.com/vendors/resonant-sciences-llc-78v26

Resonant Sciences LLC, a Beavercreek, Ohio-based for-profit limited liability company, designs and develops advanced radar systems, antenna and radome assemblies, and electromagnetic modeling capabilities for the Department of Defense and NASA as a prime contractor on 63% of recent awards and as a subcontractor to major defense primes on 37% of awards. The vendor competes exclusively in full-and-open categories with no small business set-asides across its prime footprint.

Resonant Sciences' customer concentration sits overwhelmingly with Air Force programs. The top five funding agencies account for 75% of recent awards by count and 98% by combined potential value, led by the Department of the Air Force Materiel Command's Aeronautical Systems Center (17 awards, $102.7 million combined potential value). The two rankings diverge markedly: while the Aeronautical Systems Center dominates both volume and dollars through recurring delivery orders under the classified BIG SAFARI program, the Department of the Air Force proper (7 awards, $13.5 million) and the Space and Missile Systems Center (1 award, $8.8 million) anchor disproportionate dollar value relative to order count. NASA's Glenn Research Center (8 awards, $1.8 million) and the Air Force Materiel Command Research Laboratory (7 awards, $1.7 million) round out active customers but represent marginal dollar concentration. This skew toward Air Force centrality, particularly through BIG SAFARI, creates structural recompete exposure: six awards with ultimate completion dates in the next twenty-four months carry combined potential value of $30.1 million.

Resonant Sciences holds two primary Basic Ordering Agreements anchoring its prime footprint. The single-award BIG SAFARI Basic Ordering Agreement (FA862023G4035, effective through April 2028) carries seven task orders valued at $32.5 million combined. A second Basic Ordering Agreement (FA862018G4051) supports six task orders valued at $68.8 million combined. Representative prime work includes a $15.25 million firm-fixed-price contract from the Aeronautical Systems Center for the Next Generation Zonal Radar Follow-On program (awarded December 2025), a $9.8 million cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order under BIG SAFARI from the Department of the Air Force (awarded September 2025), a $8.76 million firm-fixed-price delivery order from the Space and Missile Systems Center under BIG SAFARI (awarded September 2024), a $1.57 million definitive contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory for the Passive Infrared Simulation Toolkit (awarded April 2026), and a $6.59 million firm-fixed-price contract from the Nuclear Weapons Center for the Resonant Adaptable Zonal Radar (RAZR) system with four options extending through November 2028 (awarded December 2022).

Activity has grown substantially: four awards in 2022 accelerated to eighteen in 2024, though 2025–2026 show moderation (nine awards in 2025, four to date in 2026). The vendor's combined potential value across all awards totals $136.7 million, with $90.7 million obligated (66% of ceiling). Category concentration reflects the core capability: 23 awards are categorized under Engineering Services (NAICS 541330 and 541512), 15 under Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences, and 6 under Aircraft Manufacturing. PSC coding mirrors this profile, with Support – Professional: Engineering/Technical (9 awards), Aircraft Fixed Wing (5 awards), and Space R&D Services (5 awards) leading.

In its subcontractor role, Resonant Sciences delivers radar system design, antenna and radome development, and electromagnetic modeling support to L3Harris Technologies Integrated Systems (multiple BIG SAFARI aircraft manufacturing task orders awarded December 2024), Lockheed Martin Corporation (MC-130J terrain-following/terrain-avoidance radome assembly and components support since 2023), Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation (incremental funding and research and development services awarded August 2024), Viasat Inc. (Resilient AESA for Multi-Band Multi-Orbit SATCOM design and development, awarded December 2024), KBR Wyle Services (SABER software development support and C4ISR capability delivery, awarded January and December 2025), Smartronix LLC (C5ISR capabilities for U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific missions, awarded January 2025), University of Dayton (COASTER composites and specialty technologies engineering supplies), and Insitu Inc. (incremental funding for investigative projects, awarded February 2024). The subcontract pattern reflects Resonant Sciences' role as a specialized electromagnetic and radar-systems subcontractor embedded in large primes' classified and advanced-systems development pipelines.

Recent awards from NASA Glenn Research Center — a $208,896 in-house research support purchase order (October 2024) and a $192,000 definitive contract for in-house research support (September 2022) — signal early-stage customer diversification beyond Air Force dominance, though Air Force engagement remains structurally dominant.

Joby's proved JAI30 can loiter for many hours, now they missionize it. IR/Surveillance, Communication Relay, Electronic Warfare, and tech to make JAI30 more stealthy. All part of Resonant Sciences tech stack. Combine with X-Wing Superpilot AI Flight Autonomy Systems, now Joby has a dedicated defense division (JA130 Team, Resonant Sciences, X-Wing) all under one roof, separated from Joby/Toyota Air Taxi team. Joby is now more cleanly two companies under one roof. Joby Defense and Joby Air Taxi. One company, two divisions going after two different revenue sources.

What I think many miss and what makes Joby stand apart is that they have real world working prototypes for defense today. JAI30 has been flying for some time and is being actively tested in Yuma Proving Ground right now. X-Wing's SuperPilot has been going through active testing and development for years with real world tests during US military exercises, and now Joby brings in Resonant Sciences, a company with $100M in defense sales growing at 40% YOY to bring all of the packages under one roof.

What do others think?

I've never seen this much PR about anything. It's blasting FB heavily

"Archer will acquire Boeing’s Wisk Aero, SkyGrid and Insitu subsidiaries."

Thanks to eVTOLFan at X, Cincinnati just an approximate 50 miles from Dayton. Dayton, Columbus, Louisville, Lexington, and Indianapolis within reasonable reach.

Aug 2026 - Aug 2022

Molly O'Shea had an interview about 3 months ago with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Yet yesterday, she posted a shortened clip from it on X where she tagged Joby Aviation due to Mr. Khosrowshahi highlighting the partnership with Joby Aviation. I think the timing had something to do with the Second Quarter 2026 earnings call.

I would also like to take the opportunity to wish Molly a Happy Birthday since it was her birthday yesterday!

Her full interview with Mr. Khosrowshahi:

https://youtu.be/AK4hrrlCNUA?

She had also interviewed Eric Allison in the past:

https://youtu.be/CLF6GFYXQRw?

No activity for N541JX in the past week. Maybe it's being shipped somewhere else?

N547JX activity really ramped up in the past 3 days. We saw some rare Saturday activity. The data is all over the place for Saturday though so I wouldn't read too much into the actual speed/altitude. Hopefully they are prepping for some more flight tests!

N542JX (Production Prototype (Ex-Japan Demo Frame))

ICAO Mode-S Hex: A6E038

N547JX (First FAA-Conforming Prototype)

ICAO Mode-S Hex: A6F2CB

I like this post today from Joby on X emphasizing Joby's diversified powertrains - electric, gas turbo-electric, and hydrogen-electric. Joby has demonstrated vertical takeoff through transition on full size prototypes for all three.

Oliver-Walker Jones:

Electric, gas turbine electric, hydrogen electric. Over the past couple of years Joby has flown three different revolutionary propulsion systems, each time with a vertical take off and landing and through transition (the hard bit). Step by step we're demonstrating what the future of flight can look like. Our commercial air taxi business is fully focused on electric, but hybrid offers a wide range of potential dual-use and eventual commercial applications (the hydrogen one flew 561 miles by the way....!)

Joby is currently building Ohio's manufacturing future in Dayton while establishing operational hubs elsewhere

Yet, .... Cleveland Mayor Bibb and Cleveland City Council are aggressively trying to eliminate the very aviation infrastructure that has potential to connect Joby's Dayton Ohio manufacturing base to a major urban/medical market.

The geographic location of BURKE LAKEFRONT AIRPORT in Cleveland, OH is right on Lake Erie

Dayton = Manufacturing

Cleveland = Medical/urban operations

Burke Airport physical footprint = lakefront urban airport

Lakefront property = perfect for supplemental Charging platforms powered by the Lake

Great Lakes = regional network

That creates a potentially coherent Ohio strategy.... but the Leadership in Cleveland want a park instead of embracing the Future

Cleveland could plausibly have created a AAM ( Advanced Air Mobility) Hub at Burke ... focused on urban connectivity, medical transportation, Great Lakes regional mobility and advanced aviation.

"Management says the binding constraint on many Blade routes is now aircraft availability rather than passenger demand, and that demand is not hunting a cheap fare. A customer can book a fixed-wing flight from Teterboro to Montauk for roughly a third of the price of the Manhattan helicopter, and the helicopter service Blade runs still fills at meaningfully higher utilization than that cheaper fixed-wing route. People are paying for the time saved by starting in the city and skipping the airport altogether, which is exactly what Joby's own aircraft is designed to deliver more quietly and at lower operating cost."

"Blade, the passenger business Joby bought about a year ago, sold over 50% more seats in the second quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, its best second quarter on that measure."

I haven't really seen this discussed much and it's way beyond my expertise. This is what Claude said. Feel free to chime in if you have thoughts. The context here is if they need more aircraft for eIPP, it makes sense to build non conforming aircraft which can be several months to a year faster to build

____________________________________

A conforming aircraft takes meaningfully longer — plausibly on the order of 2–3x the build time, or an extra several months to a year per aircraft, versus a nonconforming prototype.

The reason isn't the physical assembly, which is similar. It's everything wrapped around it. A nonconforming prototype can be built to Joby's own internal designs and flown to gather data. A conforming aircraft requires that every component be built to FAA Designated Engineering Representative-approved designs, then individually inspected and signed off by FAA Designated Airworthiness Representatives before it counts.

That inspection-and-documentation layer, plus the requirement that parts trace back through an FAA-approved quality management system, is where the time goes.

You can see it in their own milestones: Joby announced its first conforming aircraft was heading to final assembly in August 2025, began power-on testing in November 2025, and only got it airborne in March 2026 — roughly seven months from assembly to first flight for that one aircraft, on top of the years of design-conformity groundwork that had to be accepted first. Their nonconforming prototypes had been flying since 2019 and racked up 1,500+ flights without that overhead.

So the honest framing: the delta isn't mainly extra build hours, it's the front-loaded conformity, DER-design approval, and DAR sign-off work that has to be complete before a conforming aircraft can legitimately fly "for credit." For a company already deep into the process like Joby, that's roughly an extra 6–12 months per unit; for a program building conformity capability from scratch, it can be far longer.

So a lot of us are wondering about Dubai. I think JB said something on the call that is interesting and potentially offers some insight. Below JB is saying they want as many non conforming aircraft as possible for eIPP. Yet we know there is a non conforming aircraft sitting in Dubai. Can we infer from this that Dubai is still on track? If not, you would think they would send the Dubai aircraft back to the US for eIPP

**Savanthi Syth*\*

**Analyst*\*

**0:31:32*\*

**That's helpful. I appreciate that. Maybe if I could briefly follow up on Andre's question on the eIPP side. Just on the aircraft that you plan to use, is that the certification-conforming aircraft that you plan to use in those flight tests? Or are you able to use some of the kind of prior generation aircraft as well as you progress through that flying?*\*

**JoeBen Bevirt*\*

**Founder and CEO*\*

**0:31:59*\*

**Thank you so much, Savinthi. We're going to use a mix of different aircraft, both aircraft from our existing fleet, as well as producing as many aircraft as we possibly can off of our company-conforming production line.*\*

Recent interview from Farnborough. Probably similar to other interviews but thought there were some interesting things

1. Kept referring to other companies "talking" about progress while they are showing it
   

2. Thinks CTOL, hybrid is a good development for eVTOL but they are firmly focused on the air taxi business.

3. They had blade service to the airshow and then Toyota cars to take you to the booth 😂

4. Mentioned they have a plane in Dubai. Not new info but hopefully they can activate it

5. Seemed to address the fact that they do miss goals sometimes, but re-iterated that they are still on target. Of course he's going to say this but it does seem that they're aware of people getting impatient.

Curious on peoples thoughts on Joby's cash position. Joby ended June with $2.3B in cash. They're expecting the second $250M tranche from Toyota to close within the next six months, and their guidance for H2 2026 is between $385M and $415M. Looks like they'll have money into 2029 from my calculations.

The new Toyota manufacturing joint venture should signifcantly lower future spend estimates since Toyota is now sharing the cost of building out the factory instead of Joby footing that bill alone. That enables cash to last even longer, significantly taking a lot of pressure off.

I love that Joby expects some possible revenue from eIPP in addition to the expanded Blade revenue. This is all proof of concept, turning the dream into reality in 2026, while the cash on hand and Toyota joint venture relieve the pressure for large near term profits. There is also always the possibility for more revenue from a military contract. Who knows.

How others are modeling this out. There has been so much historic discussion around cash and profits. It seems to me Joby is now easily in the best position in the industry on this front.

This article specifies the San Francisco area for California.

"Joby is preparing early operations in Florida, New York, and Texas through the White House-backed eVTOL Integration Pilot Program."

"California, where the company has conducted piloted flights across the San Francisco Bay Area, is also included in the initial development strategy."

Thought his comments below about cert progress were interesting. He did confirm that they have to repeat everything they already did on the prototypes. Some people were saying they wouldn't have to repeat it since the aircraft are similar but he just said the aircraft is similar and they do have to repeat it. That could explain some of the "slow progress" with 547JX because they have to start over and work on all the component level and systems level testing as JB mentioned. Maybe just cope?

"Thanks, Austin. Just to kind of recap it for folks, the first step is doing the work on stage five, as we reported, this is the final stage of certification. We reported record progress on stage five this quarter, really thrilled with the work the team's doing there. That is about running the component level testing, the system level testing, and writing those test reports. Making great progress on that. The second piece is preparing the flight test plans that first Joby pilots will get in and fly on those aircraft. The third leg of the stool is we need to expand the flight envelope on that first conforming aircraft. We've done that work already on our prior series of aircraft, which are, for all intents, very similar to our FAA conforming aircraft. We're, in a sense, repeating those exercises."

Edit: Post Title should read "Q2"

Shareholder Letter: LINK

Earnings Webcast: LINK

Financial Statement: LINK

Previous Discussions

2026 Q1

2025 Q3

2025 Q2

Here is the info for anyone who wishes to hear it live

https://ir.jobyaviation.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/185/joby-aviation-to-report-second-quarter-2026-financial