When the U.S. Army canceled the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program in February 2024, it was very upsetting for many in the industry — but it wasn’t altogether surprising.
The FARA program was initiated in 2018 as part of the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program to develop a successor to the Bell OH-58 Kiowa scout helicopter. But before FARA, there were also three other attempts to develop a successor to the OH-58.
All these programs were also canceled prior to reaching production: the Light Helicopter Experimental (1982-2004, development of the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche), the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (2004-2008, development of the Bell ARH-70 Arapaho), and the Armed Aerial Scout (2012-2013, evaluation of off-the-shelf designs).
The RAH-66 Comanche program began in 1988, when the Army awarded the Boeing-Sikorsky First Team and the Bell Helicopter/McDonnell Douglas SuperTeam contracts for the initial phases of development. Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, explains in its online archive that as the program progressed, its “schedule was delayed many times as a result of the Army reducing the yearly funding and adding additional requirements.”
Rollout was achieved in May 1995, with first flight by January 1996. In April 2000, the Army called for fielding the Comanche by 2006. Test flights were conducted in 2001. However, by February 2004, “the Defense Department stunned both the Army Comanche team and Boeing-Sikorsky with an announcement that it was terminating the Comanche program,” Sikorsky stated.
History repeats itself
Exactly two decades after the Comanche program’s demise, the OEMs and their suppliers felt a similar blow from the cancelation of the FARA program. Both Bell and Sikorsky were waiting on their engines from GE Aerospace in order to complete the 360 Invictus and Raider X, respectively. The prototypes were expected to be flown later this year.
“It’s disheartening,” said Mike Hirschberg, director of strategy at the Vertical Flight Society (VFS). “The bottom line is that this is very disruptive for the companies involved. They’ve had to put in hundreds of millions of dollars and they’ve hired hundreds of people for this program. Some of these employees moved across the country to take the jobs. Now, each company has to try and find other work for those who were working in the FARA program or lay them off.”
A Bell representative said the company is “disappointed by the [Army] decision … Bell remains confident in our ready-to-test FARA prototype for the Army’s requirements. We will apply the knowledge and demonstrated successes of our FARA development efforts on future aircraft.”
Bell stated that it will continue to “work closely with the Army” on executing its V-280 Valor as the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), designed to replace the venerable Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk in the Army fleet.
The Army initiated the FLRAA program in 2019 as part of the FVL initiative to replace a part of its assault and utility helicopter fleet. Bell first revealed its concept for the Valor back in 2013 for the Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator program, the precursor to FVL.
For its part, Sikorsky, which lost out to Bell in the FLRAA program and has now shelved its Raider X design after the canceled FARA program, stated that it will continue to execute on its current programs, seek to capture new business, and remain a vibrant part of the rotary-wing industrial base.
“Sikorsky has a robust backlog and pipeline with [the UH-60] Black Hawks, CH-53K [King Stallions], [HH-60W] Combat Rescue Helicopters, MH-60R [Seahawks] and the S-92s,” said a company spokesperson. “The orders’ backlog will extend beyond 2027, and we are seeing strong demand globally for our products. We are confident we can build on that backlog in the years ahead.”
The Black Hawk in the U.S. and international market includes a multi-year XI production opportunity and new modernization opportunities. In addition, the spokesperson reported that “we are seeing a number of potential international opportunities for X2 technology, which we have developed over 15 years of testing and flying and more than $1 billion invested.”
In addition, “we are positioning to become a leader in hybrid eVTOL technology. We are designing and building a next-gen hybrid-electric VTOL demonstrator aircraft called the HEX demonstrator.”
At the same time, the spokesperson noted that in the bigger picture, the FARA cancelation “impacts America’s engineering expertise as it relates to developing next-generation rotorcraft capabilities that can keep pace with future threats. At this time, we are undertaking a thorough analysis to determine specific impacts to our workforce.”
Brain drain 2.0
Hirschberg said it’s difficult for U.S. military helicopter manufacturers to maintain strong design teams at the best of times, but especially now when a major contract like FARA is canceled.
“Fielding a new helicopter requires an engineering team with a large amount of design creativity and a wide range of capabilities to carry out analysis and so on,” he said. “Companies build up design teams over decades and try to keep those capabilities, but if they can’t support them with new programs and they lose the capability, it’s very hard to get it back.”
Hirschberg explained that from the 1980s to the present, there have been very few new designs for military helicopters fielded in the U.S. “The Black Hawk and the Apache first flew in the 1970s,” he noted, “and the Army improved them over time, but they aren’t clean sheet designs. The Army hasn’t successfully developed a new design since. The Marines are a little better off. The [Bell Boeing] V-22 Osprey, for example, first flew in 1989; the U.S. Marines fielded it in 2007, and the CH-53K King Stallion in 2022.”
Returning to the Apache, a heavy-weight attack helicopter, Hirschberg noted that the military wanted a lighter attack model with more reconnaissance capabilities. “That was the intention of the FARA program, but it kept growing and growing and the design became much heavier over time, so that it was as large as an Apache,” he explained.
“And now it’s been canceled. We’re getting to the point of fielding one or two new military designs in a generation. How do companies keep a design team going? If there are no new designs to work on, then there is no need for designers. It takes just a minute to lay off a team of specialized engineers but years to build a team like that again.”
He added, “we’ve pointed out for years that the biggest challenge to the future vertical-lift programs is the workforce. And for the last several years, we’ve also had eVTOL [electric vertical takeoff and landing] design attracting some of the best and brightest away from the helicopter companies. Most of the skills for helicopter design are transferable to eVTOL. The eVTOL startups certainly have an appeal for engineers because of the challenge to develop a new type of aircraft and they can be a big cog in a small wheel.”
VFS executive director Angelo Collins also noted that he’s seeing concerns from traditional aerospace OEMs about losing talented engineers to the emerging advanced air mobility sector. He referred to the situation as “brain drain 2.0,” and noted the aerospace industry has “never seen this much private investment … with all the eVTOL companies getting started.”
There is good news, Hirschberg said, that the Army plans to continue developing the Bell V-280 Valor through the FLRAA program, with plans to field this new tiltrotor design in the 2030 timeframe. He said other military services are also planning new rotorcraft programs.
The Army’s total investment in FARA through end of fiscal year 2023 was $2.013 billion, said U.S. Army spokesperson Ellen Lovett.
Moving forward, “the Army is reallocating resources that were meant for FARA to other Army priorities,” she noted. Specifically, the Army intends to make new investments in the latest upgrades to legacy platforms — namely the UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47F Block II Chinook — as well as in unmanned systems and space-based assets.
“We know there will be more design contracts for new helicopters in the future,” Hirschberg said, “but we don’t know if the companies will still have the design skills that they once had.”
VFS forecasts 10,000 additional engineers are needed in the next decade to support planned military and civil rotorcraft developments, as well the eVTOL market.