Airbility 开发多款 eVTOL 防无人机系统并完成原型机试飞

- Fast Interceptor Aircraft and the ABLE Command System Answer Low-Cost Drone Threats at a Matching Cost

2026-10-08     Grace K.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Nautilus Investment is running a global corporate collaboration program in New York from Oct. 13 to Oct. 18, 2026, to support Korean companies entering the U.S. market. The program includes a cross-border forum and investor relations (IR) sessions, local workshops, the Small Business Expo, KOOM Stage, KOOM Haus and networking events. Participating companies will present their technologies and products to buyers, investors and other stakeholders in New York while exploring opportunities for partnerships, investment and market entry. Nautilus Investment, a U.S.-affiliated venture capital firm based in Songdo, Incheon, was founded in 2019 and also operates global corporate collaboration programs connecting startups with technology companies such as NVIDIA, Microsoft and ANSYS.

Shooting down a cheap drone from the ground gets more expensive the farther away the threat is, and the cost can end up far above the value of the target.

Sending a faster aircraft into the air to chase and intercept the threat changes that equation.

Airbility Co., Ltd., a counter-UAS (C-UAS) company founded in November 2023 and led by CEOs Jinmo Lee and Taekyu Ryu, has built its systems on that approach using high-speed electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The founders ｉｎｃｌｕｄｅ aerospace engineers from the Agency for Defense Development who worked on the KT-1, T-50 and KF-21 programs, together with production and commercialization specialists from Hyundai Motor and LG Electronics, and 80% of the workforce is in R&D.

The lineup is organized by mission and weight class. The AB-U2 is a 2 kg-class hard-kill interceptor that neutralizes a threat drone by direct impact, and the AB-U4L is a launcher-based intercept system. The AB-U10, a 10 kg-class tilt-VTOL unmanned aircraft, captures targets with a net gun to minimize collateral damage. The AB-U60 is a 3-meter, 60 kg-class aircraft that takes off vertically, converts to fixed-wing flight and cruises at over 200 km/h, and in its mothership configuration it carries and releases smaller drones for reconnaissance and first-response missions as well as counter-drone work. These are tied together by ABLE, a command-and-control system covering detection, identification, tracking, engagement and assessment. Airbility designs its own battery packs and flight-control software and is researching domestic production of electric ducted fans (EDFs).

Within two years of its founding, the company completed transition flight with three prototype aircraft. The AB-U60 was finished in December 2024 and achieved transition flight in December 2025, and the AB-U10 was unveiled at Seoul ADEX in October 2025. The AB-U60 won a Red Dot Design Award (Design Concept) in 2025 and the AB-U10 in 2026. In September 2026 Airbility raised a KRW 6.5 billion Series A led by Silicon Valley venture firm Sazze Partners, with existing investor Stonebridge Ventures following on and IBK Industrial Bank joining as a new shareholder, bringing cumulative investment to KRW 10.5 billion.

In Korea, the company has agreements with the Korea Automotive Technology Institute's AAM and Future Vehicle Safety Research Center on shared use of test infrastructure and with the Korea Anti-Drone Industry Association on defense and security cooperation. Overseas, it has signed MoUs with Saudi Arabia's SANAD Industrial for a UAV manufacturing joint venture, Vietnam's CT Group for local contract manufacturing and Southeast Asian distribution, and the Provincial Government of Cebu in the Philippines for drone training. It is also in joint-venture talks with BARQ of the UAE, exhibited at MSPO in Poland in September 2026, and plans field demonstrations in the UAE and Thailand.

The United States and the Middle East are the target markets. Airbility sees U.S. defense spending on drones and counter-drone systems expanding sharply and public-safety agencies adopting drone-as-first-responder programs, and it wants to learn which procurement routes and certification ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments apply. It is looking for systems integrators with experience supplying U.S. public-safety and defense customers and for state or local agencies and test sites to run pilots, while in the Middle East it prioritizes manufacturing and defense partners to build local production bases. Its main obstacles are NDAA compliance, Blue UAS standards and export licensing, along with the lack of channels to reach verified U.S. partners.

For the rest of 2026, the company plans to secure one system delivery each in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and to extend its platform across five weight classes, from the AB-U2 to the 600 kg-class AB-U600. Series A proceeds will go first to the air-to-air hard-kill kill chain and to building production capacity, with the first model of a new lineup due this year and a three-model lineup planned for the first half of 2027.