ARIA HALE partnership call

Britain’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency is looking for flight-test sites and specialist advisers for a programme to keep aircraft in the stratosphere for a week with a working payload. (aria.org.uk) The call sits inside ARIA’s “Enduring Atmospheric Platforms” programme, a 3.5-year effort to de-risk low-cost, long-endurance aircraft for high-altitude communications. ARIA says partner proposals are due by May 22, 2026. (aria.org.uk) The technical target is specific: deliver 300 watts continuously to a 20-kilogram payload for seven days while maintaining line-of-sight contact with a fixed point on the ground. ARIA says that equals 50.4 kilowatt-hours over one week. (aria.org.uk) In plain terms, ARIA is trying to fund aircraft that act more like reusable, steerable pseudo-satellites than conventional planes. The programme is open to fixed-wing aircraft, airships, hybrid designs and other novel architectures if they can hit the endurance and station-keeping metrics. (aria.org.uk) ARIA has framed the work as an alternative to some jobs now done by satellites, especially communications links that need lower cost and regional deployment. Its solicitation says success would create a path to “regionally scalable” infrastructure for advanced communications. (aria.org.uk) The agency is also pushing a cost target, asking teams to show a credible path to gross operating costs below £500 an hour by the end of the programme. That requirement puts economics alongside aerodynamics, power and autonomy in the selection process. (aria.org.uk) The funding call for builders is organized in three tracks: enabling technologies, full system integration and testing, and deployment and communications architecture. The separate partner call is meant to give those funded teams access to segregated testing space, platform guidance and validation support. (aria.org.uk; aria.org.uk) This did not appear overnight. In a programme thesis published before the formal call, ARIA argued that satellites are hard to update once launched and that aircraft able to harvest energy from the atmosphere could eventually stay aloft for months. (aria.org.uk) ARIA itself is a young UK funding body, created by Act of Parliament and sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to back high-risk research. The HALE call shows it moving from broad thesis-writing into the practical work of finding airspace, test infrastructure and operators who can help prove the concept. (aria.org.uk; legislation.gov.uk) The immediate next date is May 22. By then, ARIA wants would-be test partners to show they can help turn a week-long endurance target into an actual flight campaign. (aria.org.uk)