Two teams vying to build the U.S. Army’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) are advancing to the second competitive demonstration phase of an ongoing effort to develop a suitable replacement for the UH-60 Black Hawk by 2030.
Both Bell and a Sikorsky-Boeing team will enter Phase II of competitive demonstration and risk reduction (CD&RR) for FLRAA through two “other transaction authority” project agreements, awarded by the Army’s Aviation and Missile Technology Consortium on March 30.
Aside from advancing development of the aircraft that will compete to enter the formal FLRAA program of record in 2022, the second phase of CD&RR will give both teams a chance to refine and demonstrate components of the weapon systems they are pitching to the Army. Under the recently awarded agreements, each team will present initial preliminary designs for major subsystems and the conceptual weapons system, according to a March 30 statement from the Army.
Both teams also will conduct a preliminary analysis of requirements for U.S. Special Operations Command, specifically how well each perform medical evacuation and its suitability for export to foreign allies.
“The award of these agreements is a significant milestone for FLRAA,” said Brig. Gen. Rob Barrie, the Army’s aviation program executive officer. “CD&RR Phase II accelerates digital engineering design work to the subsystem level and mitigates industrial base workforce risk while maintaining competition. Through CD&RR efforts, Army leaders have had the ability to make early, informed decisions ensuring FLRAA capabilities are not only affordable, but that they meet Multi-Domain Operations requirements while delivering on an aggressive schedule that does not sacrifice rigor for speed.”
CD&RR is a continuance of the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration (JMR-TD), during which Bell built the V-280 Valor advanced tiltrotor and Sikorsky-Boeing constructed the SB-1 Defiant compound coaxial helicopter. In Phase II, those aircraft, their mission systems and weapons will be further matured in preparation for the Army to choose one winner in 2022.
CD&RR Phase II will run parallel to the Army’s decision of which airframe to choose. It also should “enable the winning offeror to complete both air vehicle and weapons system preliminary design reviews in less than a year after the programmatic contract award,” according to the Army.
That should allow for an earlier Milestone B decision, which is acquisition speak for paying one or the other manufacturer to begin building air vehicles for testing.
“An earlier Milestone B decision will provide more time for detailed design, building, and testing of prototype air vehicles,” the Army said.
Both teams moved from the initial tech demonstration into the two-year risk reduction phase of the program in 2019 with agreements to produce initial conceptual designs, requirements feasibility, and trade studies using model-based systems engineering. In that phase, Valor and Defiant became the flying prototype testbeds for the weaponized versions of the basic aircraft that could become FLRAA.
Through Phase I, Sikorsky and Boeing refined the SB>1 Defiant operational prototype into the refined Defiant X, which maintains the basic coaxial counter-spinning rotor and pusher prop design with Army-specific refinements.
“We look forward to our continued partnership with the Army on the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) Competitive Demonstration and Risk Reduction (CD&RR) program to develop this vital modernization capability,” the Sikorsky-Boeing team said in a statement. “Defiant X builds on the handling qualities and transformational capabilities proven in flight tests by our SB>1 Defiant technology demonstrator and is already undergoing testing and evaluation in a digital combat environment.”
Bell has made few tweaks to the V-280’s basic design in the three years since it first flew, though it has added capabilities like autonomous flight and a distributed aperture sensor system during its several years of flight test. Bell said the V-280 team has logged more than 200 hours through more than 160 individual test flights “that delivered critical data to validate Bell’s digital models and performance.”
“This aircraft is not an engineering science project,” said Ryan Ehinger, Bell’s vice president and program director of FLRAA. “The V-280 tiltrotor provides a critical and combat-proven capability needed to maintain our U.S. military’s ability to deter adversaries by radically improving over the current fleet’s speed, range, versatility, and sustainability. Our program has provided evidence that the V-280 is a transformational long-range assault aircraft solution for the Army and we are proud to move forward as a team to continue to mature the weapons system.”
The initial March 2020 Other Transaction Authority (OTA) awards and the agreements were not announced through the Pentagon’s regular contract award process. Using OTAs allows the Army more flexibility than the Defense Department’s traditional contracting process, but also does not require the service to publish contract amounts.
That information was published with the Phase II contracts awards announced March 30. Bell has been allotted $292 million contract for the Phase II work, according to the contract announcement. The Sikorsky-Boeing team was approved for a slightly smaller sum of $284 million. Both teams were actually paid $19.5 million when the contracts were let on March 30 and will have access to further funding as the program progresses.
