A wounded soldier at a dirt strip hundreds of kilometres from a surgeon. No helicopter in range, no crew to spare, and the radio link to headquarters patchy at best. U.S. Africa Command wants to know whether a single-engine utility aircraft can fly in, collect that casualty and fly out again with nobody at the controls.

On Wednesday 11 November, autonomy company Merlin announced that AFRICOM has awarded it a $500,000 contract to find out. The money funds a demonstration of the company’s Merlin Pilot system flying a full casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) mission in a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, planned for early U.S. government fiscal year 2027 in Morocco.

The contract covers the initial phase of AFRICOM’s Autonomous Casualty Evacuation Industry Technology Challenge, a competition looking for ways to get wounded people to higher-level care faster while putting fewer crews at risk.

The whole mission, start to finish

According to Merlin’s announcement, the demonstration will cover everything from the initial tasking and flight planning through an autonomous departure and en-route flight to an austere casualty collection site. After simulated patient loading, the Caravan is to fly the return leg on its own and land back at its designated location.

The key point is where the decisions are made. Merlin says its system will manage flight planning, navigation, contingency response and mission completion “without relying on a remote ground station or flight crew”. That is a different idea from a remotely piloted drone, which needs a continuous command-and-control link that may not exist in austere or contested areas.

Merlin says the system is designed to plan the best route from an operator’s tasking, replan around hazards as they appear, talk to air traffic control using natural language processing, and carry on safely along its authorised plan if the communications link is lost.

Why a Caravan

The choice of aircraft is practical. The Grand Caravan’s large cargo door and flat-floor cabin, the company says, allow stretchers to be loaded at ground level without rotor wash, winching or special equipment. For the demonstration its cabin will carry an air ambulance medical module providing oxygen, power and mounting points for patient-monitoring equipment.

Merlin also sees a bigger aircraft behind it. The company says there is a clear follow-on path to operational scale using a Beechcraft King Air variant, which would add twin-engine redundancy, more payload and room for several stretcher patients, medical equipment and an in-flight attendant.

Merlin’s own video of its autonomous Cessna Caravan landing at Oshkosh, the same type of aircraft it will fly for AFRICOM.

The timing is tight. The U.S. government’s fiscal year 2027 began on 1 October 2026, and in a separate investor post on its website Merlin said the Morocco demonstration is planned for early December. The announcements do not name the airfield.

A continent-sized problem

AFRICOM covers 53 African countries from its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, across a landmass the command puts at about three and a half times the size of the United States. Merlin’s announcement describes the gap bluntly: security threats can block access to nearby medical facilities, forcing longer and more dangerous patient transport, and crewed CASEVAC aircraft put more people at risk.

As TWZ pointed out in its report on the contract, the problem was exposed in October 2017, when four U.S. soldiers were killed in the ambush near Tongo Tongo in Niger. The only immediate aerial CASEVAC support then came from contractors flying out of Niamey, more than 100 miles away.

From Hercules to Caravan

Merlin is no newcomer to military autonomy. Its biggest programme is autonomy for the C-130J Hercules for U.S. Special Operations Command, and on Tuesday 10 November the company announced an $8.9 million SOCOM task order to move that work from design into integration. TWZ also notes Merlin work in support of the U.S. Air Force’s KC-135 fleet.

In September Merlin and Textron announced the SkyCourier UX, an uncrewed cargo version of the Cessna 408, which Afterburner covered in Cessna SkyCourier UX: Textron Takes the Pilots Out of the Freighter. The Caravan itself has already been flown autonomously by other companies, including Joby’s transcontinental J208 flight.

Half a million dollars is a small contract by Pentagon standards, and TWZ argued that it shows how slowly the U.S. military is moving compared with China’s fast-growing family of uncrewed cargo aircraft. But if a Caravan can fly itself to a dirt strip in Morocco, take on a stretcher and bring it home, the “golden hour” for a casualty in a remote corner of Africa could start to look very different.

Sources: Merlin (GlobeNewswire release and company news posts, 11 November 2026), TWZ, SOFX, Aviation Week

Header photo: Merlin