Merlin FlightClub

“I believe that autonomy is going to make aviation much safer.” After 27 years of flying C-130s and C-17s in the U.S. Air Force, Erin Staine-Pyne has seen firsthand what pilots are up against and how autonomy might help. As she shares, autonomy's value can span the full range of flight, but what excites her most is mission autonomy: building capability where the system understands intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, helping pilots operate safer, at a higher capacity, and improving aviation broadly. The future of American aerospace is autonomous.

just added $MRLN

$MRLN: Roth 2026 London Conference Takeaways

From amber waves of grain to the farthest reaches of the globe, the C-130J has supported missions that matter for generations. 🇺🇸

$MRLN: Bought decent chunk today. Merlin is going to be very volatile so good idea to trade some of it around.

No traditionally crewed, fixed-wing aircraft has ever flown autonomously in commercial revenue service. Our goal is for Merlin to be the first company to do that with real autonomy on real planes flying real routes in revenue-generating operations. We're targeting New Zealand in 2027. We've been operating a flight test center in Kerikeri since 2022, logging hundreds of autonomous flights with Merlin Pilot, the same system we're certifying with New Zealand's CAA on a concurrent validation pathway with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). We're now approaching the final phases of that certification journey. Many of the companies attempting to commercialize autonomous flight are using custom-built eVTOL airframes or remote operators. We're doing it the hard way, on fixed-wing aircraft with autonomy in the cockpit, because we believe that's what the future of aviation actually looks like.

In 2022, we built our facility in Kerikeri, New Zealand with a clear goal: to be the first company to fly a traditionally crewed, fixed-wing aircraft autonomously in commercial revenue service. We've made meaningful progress on our certification path in the first half of this year and believe we are entering the final phases before commercial service. Pending regulatory acceptance, we intend to launch commercial operations in New Zealand with certified aircraft flown by Merlin Pilot from takeoff to touchdown, under real regulatory oversight, on real routes, in revenue-generating operations. New Zealand has some of the most isolated communities in the world, diverse terrain, and rapidly changing weather conditions. Aviation here is essential infrastructure and the exact environment where certified autonomy needs to prove itself.

$MRLN just cleared it with USSOCOM for the C-130J. Here is exactly what this means and how dramatically it de-risks the thesis. In military procurement, CDR is the dividing line between a "science project" and a viable product. It means the DoD has rigorously audited Merlin's final design-down to the exact system architecture, software fail-safes, and integration plans-and officially signed off. From a risk perspective, this is a massive shift: Technical Risk is Substantially Retired: USSOCOM has formally validated that the Merlin Pilot meets their strict airworthiness and operational standards. The question of "can they engineer a solution that the military accepts?" has been answered with a yes. The Phase Shift: MRLN is officially off the whiteboard. The mandate is now pure execution: physical hardware integration into the airframe and ground/flight testing. Revenue Visibility: Clearing this specific hurdle protects and unlocks the next phases of their $105M IDIQ contract. We aren't talking about SaaS or AI wrappers here. This is hard-tech integration into the most relied-upon transport aircraft in the US military. Passing CDR proves the baseline technology is sound. If the architecture is cleared for the Super Hercules, it creates a scalable, pre-validated blueprint for every other heavy-lift platform in the fleet. The engineering is validated. The risk profile just fundamentally changed.