“There’s been a lot of time, money, and energy that have been used up in the development of these aircraft that have unfortunately been lost,” said Mike Hirschberg, director of strategy at the Vertical Flight Society (VFS), during a press briefing at Heli-Expo last week to discuss the future of vertical aviation.
Hirschberg was referring to the canceled Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program on Feb. 8, in which Bell and Sikorsky were competing to develop the next-generation high-speed aircraft that would replace the retired OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. Before the program was canceled, the companies were expecting first flight of the Invictus 360 and Raider X, respectively, by the end of the year.
Instead of forging ahead with the program, the U.S. Army said it plans to turn its attention to upgrading its legacy platforms: the UH-60 Black Hawks and CH-47F Block II Chinooks, as well as unmanned aerial systems and space-based assets.
“Among other things, one of the main concerns [is companies] wasted millions of dollars of their own money to have a program canceled,” Angelo Collins, VFS executive director, told Vertical. “The industrial base is bleeding because of that, and [companies are] obviously going to be a little bit more hesitant to do work with the Army in the future.”
Collins fears the Army canceling FARA may “exacerbate the departure of talented engineers that are working at [OEMs] and large defense contractors. [These companies are] not going to have the talent to even bid on future work if the Army or others want to do new programs. They all left to go work for the private companies, so that’s a concern we see.”
The canceled Army program is not only a blow to aerospace companies but also to industry advocates like VFS, a non-profit educational technical society that supports research and development for future aviation technology.
“Our members work across the vertical flight world,” Hirschberg said. “Their work today are tomorrow’s projects,” which, along with new capabilities for military rotorcraft, also includes electric VTOL aircraft and hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Referring to the Heli-Expo tradeshow, Collins said it’s not common to see large tradeshow events that include both traditional rotorcraft and advanced air mobility (AAM) represented under the same roof, but Heli-Expo provides a rare opportunity where the two worlds can collide.
Aside from aerospace giants like Sikorsky dipping its feet in the AAM waters with its hybrid-electric demonstrator (HEX) aircraft, Airbus with its CityAirbus NextGen, and Bell with its hybrid-electric Nexus program, Collins said from his point of view, there’s not much overlap between traditional OEMs and eVTOL startups. In fact, he’s seeing concerns from traditional OEMs about losing talented engineers to the emerging AAM sector.
Calling it the “brain drain 2.0,” Collins said the aerospace industry has “never seen this much private investment in the private sector, specifically with all the electric VTOL companies getting started.”
While it’s positive news that the AAM sector is attracting the interest of students and future engineers, he said there needs to be an equal distribution between those entering the traditional rotorcraft sector and exploring the novel AAM sector.
“We want to just see talent, people in general, enter the vertical flight community,” Collins said. “So that ties back to us trying to get kids to show up to the [Annual] Forum, and to participate in the student chapters.”
So what does the future of vertical aviation look like for the leaders at VFS? It might be bit unclear with the FARA program following in the same path as the canceled Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche program. But Collins told Vertical the future of vertical-lift continues to be the advancements made into electrifying aircraft, ensuring a pipeline for talented engineers to enter the aerospace industry, and certifying these new aircraft technology. On the defense side, VFS wants to see more research and development for vertical-lift warfighting technology.
“We hope to see successes, at least for the currently funded programs,” Collins said. “We want to ensure that the funds that were [obligated] for future vertical-lift work — that we had advocated for in the past — stays in that project and doesn’t get moved out. That’s something we’re going to advocate for.”
