The Army is committed to its search for a next-generation rotorcraft and will not tolerate cost overruns and development delays that clipped the wings of earlier attempts to build a future helicopter.
Future Vertical Lift (FVL) sits at number three on the Army’s prioritized list of modernization initiatives and seeks a faster, more maneuverable family of rotorcraft to eventually replace all the service’s helicopters.
“There is no intent, and the secretary and I are not going to stand for delays. This is an urgent need. We need to get it,” Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley on March 15 told the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense. “There are six priorities. This is number three. … This is a very important priority for the Army. We are committed to it and we are going to try to keep this thing on track.”
Two operational prototypes built by two industry teams are in flight test under the FVL precursor Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration (JMR-TD) program. The Lockheed Martin [LMT] Sikorsky/Boeing [BA] SB-1 Defiant uses dual, coaxial rotors for lift and a tail-mounted pusher propeller for fast forward flight. It has not yet flown, but the smaller-scale S-97 Raider has. One of the two Raider prototypes crashed on landing last year and flight test has not yet resumed.
Bell Helicopter has entered flight test with its V-280 Valor next-generation tiltrotor. The aircraft took flight for the first time on Dec. 18 and company test pilots have slowly widened its performance envelope.
Army Secretary Mark Esper said the competitive prototyping process, most of which has been funded by the industry teams, represents a new way of doing development that should help the service avoid disastrous and costly flameouts like the $7 billion RAH-66 Comanche or ARH-70 Arapho experimental helicopters.
“What we’re doing right now reflects the different approach to acquisition that we are taking,” Esper told HAC-D. “It reflects a whole new approach for us. We prototype. We test. We fail. We learn. We prototype. And we repeat until we nail the requirements and get on a much quicker trajectory to get the endstate that we want.”
Milley said a formal request for proposals for FVL should go out in early fall and that JMR-TD was on track to produce requirements for that document. What the Army needs is a faster, more survivable and maneuverable aircraft optimized for the high-intensity combat environments soldiers are likely to encounter in future wars, Milley said.
“The helicopters we have today, the Apache, UH-60 and the [CH]-47 – the 47 has been around a long, long time, since Vietnam – they are great helicopters,” Milley said. “They are good helicopters. They’re capable. They’re guts have all been redone and we’re going to continue to invest in those for the foreseeable future. But, the future operating environment is going to be significantly different, we think, especially if it’s against a near-peer competitor, than the current operating environment. So, we need an aircraft that can, first, survive.”
A primary desire is for aircraft to be optionally manned for certain missions, which will require sophisticated robotic or autonomous control systems. Achieving that in an aircraft with a significant increase in range, speed and performance represent “pretty stiff requirements,” Milley acknowledged.
“The discussion with industry is ongoing right now and there are a variety of possibilities out there from a technological standpoint,” he said. “We’ll know more throughout the summer and as we get into the fall to make some hard decisions.”