[1] On 3 March 2016, DARPA awarded Aurora Flight Sciences $89.4 million to build and demonstrate their LightningStrike concept, beating out the other three competitors.

Phase II of the VTOL X-Plane project will fabricate two air vehicles before flight testing, planned by September 2018.

[2][3][4][5][6] A 20 percent-scale demonstrator, weighing 325 lb (147 kg) using wings and canards made of carbon composites and 3D-printed plastics, was flown on 29 March 2016.

[9] In April 2018, after the subscale demonstrator achieved the VTOL X-Plane major objectives, Darpa cancelled the project before flight testing due to no successor to inherit the program and growing commercial interest, as electric distributed propulsion is used in Aurora’s eVTOL aircraft developed with Uber Elevate.

The air vehicle will weigh between 10,000–12,000 lb (4,500–5,400 kg), about the size of a UH-1Y Venom, and cruise faster than 300 knots.