S97 Raider and JMR/FVL program News + Videos
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Jura The idiot
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Jura The idiot
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TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Generally both the big to are looking at Medium lifters and UAV versions. where Sikorsky pushed ahead to build Raider on there own. Bell has pushed more to the medium lifter with the Valor. where things get really interesting Is when they start looking at the FVL heavy and Ultra classes. Boeing and Bell I think would have to compete with more or less the same Tiltrotor Concepts well Lockheed may break off and either try to make practical Abe Karems Optimum speed tiltrotors or just try and fill the Ultra class with a conventional lifter in the A400M class.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Defiant undergoing rigorous testing prior to first flight this year
By: 1 hour ago
demonstrator is now undergoing rigorous testing prior to its first flight expected later this year, according to Boeing and Sikorsky company officials.
Defiant is likely to fly in the latter part of this summer, Randy Rotte, Boeing’s director of global sales and marketing for cargo helicopters and Future Vertical Lift, told Defense News in a recent interview.
“First flight is an important milestone in any developmental program,” Rotte said. Yet, “I would submit that we are really focused on providing information to the Army throughout the whole flight test program to inform them as they go forward, as they are doing their analysis of alternatives, as they are doing their technical readiness assessment, as they are preparing for their program of record.”
The Army is assessing as part of an effort to inform requirements for its Future Vertical Lift family of helicopters that are expected to reach an initial capability in the 2030s.
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The Army’s Joint Multi-Role (JMR) program allows for yearlong flight test programs for both the Bell V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft and Defiant. The while Defiant is still working toward that milestone.
Defiant issue.
While the Army is looking for ways to expedite bringing FVL aircraft into service, recently released fiscal 2019 budget documents , not accelerating.
Sikorsky and Boeing are taking a very specific and calculated approach to getting Defiant airborne, according to Rich Koucheravy, Sikorsky business development director for FVL.
Koucheravy was even hesitant to name a specific date for Defiant’s first flight “because we are not focused on a date, per se; what we are focused on is when we do fly Defiant, we will have been through all of those activities, and we have already begun to build some of our ‘do not exceed’ criteria for our components, and we will fully test out the system so that we have a good productive test flight program,” he said.
“We will fly when it’s right and safe. We are not going to rush to get up on some artificial date,” Koucheravy said.
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A Sikorsky-Boeing team is designing the second demonstrator aircraft — the SB-1 Defiant — in the Joint Multi-Role program ahead of the Army's FVL program of record.
The team is taking a phased approach to its test program that is not just centered on the aircraft, he added.
There are several big pieces at play. First, the team has a software integration lab in Stratford, Connecticut, that is hooked up to a flight simulator. “In that lab are all the hardware, the flight-worthy software, hardware boxes and of course all the servos, all the actuators that operate the flight-control systems for this aircraft in a lab,” Koucheravy said. “So when those pilots are working on the flight control software and developing that while they are flying the simulator, they are actually putting time on those flight-control components.”
The team is building “a lot of reliability, a lot of hours on all those hardware, software components that will inform our test program,” he said.
Boeing and Sikorsky are also building a powertrain system test bed next to where the aircraft is currently coming together at Sikorsky’s developmental flight center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The test bed is essentially an aircraft that replicates Defiant on an iron frame strapped to the ground. The team is installing engines, transmission, rotor blades — all of the elements of a flight-worthy powertrain — and plans to get 50 or more good hours on all the major systems before Defiant flies, according to Koucheravy.
The aircraft is mostly built, he added, and the team has already tested “basically all of the systems on board the aircraft that support flight, so our hydraulics, our electrics, our avionics, our fuel systems, everything has been completely tested.”
The blade-manufacturing issue that slowed down the process to build the aircraft is “mostly behind us,” Koucheravy noted.
Part of the Joint Multi-Role program tasking includes coming up with ways to manufacture elements of possible future helicopters and requires the development and maturation of some advanced processes.
“Part of this is the reality of building a one-off, building prototypes using existing tooling, not purpose-built tooling, and these blades are definitely different than blades on Chinook, Black Hawk or Apache, whatever. And building them in a different manner, they have different properties to support,” Boeing’s Rotte said.
Boeing and Sikorsky had to push the envelope on the manufacturing side to build a rotor blade that had never been built before.
While the blades are now being steadily produced, “once you produce them, you have to test them, and we’ve got to go through all the elements after that. So it’s not just building them — it’s making sure your build process went according to plan” and that they fit on the aircraft, Rotte said.
“We are confident that as we finish the final build, we will be in the air in 2018 and we believe our plans support that and we are going to have a very successful, risk-reduced, deliberate and safe test program on Defiant because we have already learned a tremendous amount by iterating flight control software, hardware and all the power train before we lift off the ground for the first time,” Koucheravy said.
Jura The idiot
General
you quoted me reposting what I had posted
LEL
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
U.S. Army Leadership ‘Won’t Stand’ For Future Vertical Lift Delays
Mar 15, 2018 | Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
The U.S. Army says developing a next-generation successor to the UH-60 Black Hawk and other legacy helicopters is a high priority that will change how ground forces fight and maneuver in future operating environments: Bell
The heads of the U.S. Army say they “won’t stand for delays” on the multiservice Future Vertical Lift program, despite a re-phasing in the fiscal 2019 budget.
FVL is the Army’s No. 3 acquisition priority after long-range precision fires and ground vehicle modernization, and therefore it is the Army Aviation community’s No. 1 priority.
FVL-Medium, the first of five planned FVL acquisition programs, would deliver a next-generation replacement for the troop-carrying Army H-60 Black Hawk and Bell H-1 Huey utility/assault helicopters. But there are concerns about how long this first new rotorcraft will take to field, since production and deployment are not scheduled to begin until fiscal 2030.
In fiscal 2018, a request for proposals for the initial technology maturation and risk-reduction phase of FVL-Medium was scheduled for release in fiscal 2019, following Materiel Development and Milestone A acquisition decisions. But the latest plan depicted in the fiscal 2019 budget plan, as released in February, shifts the Milestone A decision and issuance of an RFP into fiscal 2021.
But according to Army officials, that has not decelerated the broader program of record. It actually reverts to the original acquisition timeline.
As noted by service leaders, the Army, although the largest stakeholder in FVL-Medium, is not the acquisition authority. It is a joint program, with oversight from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), like the Lightning II.
“The defense acquisition executive deferred establishing a Milestone A date until after completion of the analysis of alternatives and subsequent requirements development, to ensure the planned acquisition strategy provided an affordable, sustainable and effective materiel solution,” the Army tells Aerospace DAILY in a statement. “The program is still on track for Milestone A decision in fiscal 2021, which was the original proposal for the program.”
Asked to explain the changes to the timeline at a House appropriations committee hearing on Capitol Hill on March 15, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley says the timing of the RFP release will be decided this fall, as planned. He says the long-serving Black Hawk, AH-64 Apache, and Chinook remain “great helicopters” and the Army will continue to spend money to modernize them for the “foreseeable future.” But he stressed that the Army is committed to FVL, which will deliver a faster and more agile platform that can survive and win in future operating environments.
“We need an aircraft that can fly faster and farther than any existing rotary-wing aircraft today,” he says. “We need an aircraft that is agile, both while inflight to avoid enemy air defenses and at the ‘X,’ or landing zone, to evade or survive against intense ground fire.
“Those are some pretty stiff requirements, so the discussion with industry is ongoing right now about what’s out there from a technological standpoint,” Milley said. “We’ll know more throughout the summer, but there is no intent—and the secretary and I are not going to stand for—delays. This is an urgent need.”
At a defense programs forum in Washington on March 6, Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy also denied any deceleration of FVL-Medium, saying “it’s actually on track as a program of record.” He notes that the next milestone decision is expected this fall, sometime between September and December.
Whatever comes out of the milestone decision will influence the phasing of the FVL program for the Army and Marine Corps going forward. It could also impact other Army Aviation programs, such as the Improved Turbine Engine Program. ITEP was conceived as a replacement for the T700 in the Black Hawk and Apache, but could also power a next-generation lightweight Armed Aerial Scout platform.
“The Army continues to explore opportunities to accelerate FVL by engaging OSD and Marine Corps stakeholders to ensure funding is synchronized with requirements,” the Army says in response to questions from Aerospace DAILY. “Once the analysis of alternatives is complete, the defense acquisition executive will establish a Milestone A date.”
Rotorcraft manufacturers such as Bell, , and Sikorsky have been pressing the Army to move faster on FVL, saying their concepts are mature enough to be introduced sooner. Industry teams have spent hundreds of millions of dollars advancing new concepts, with only limited co-investment by the federal government, and they want to see a return on investment.
AVX, Bell, Boeing, Karem, and Sikorsky are the leading participants in the Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD), an experimentation effort meant to inform the requirements development process for FVL.
Bell has recently been flying its V-280 Valor, a third-generation tiltrotor, in Amarillo, Texas. Meanwhile, Sikorsky and Boeing are completing assembly of the coaxial-rotor SB-1 Defiant in Palm Beach, Florida, with plans to fly by year’s end. Karem and AVX have been maturing their advanced concepts for JMR-TD through laboratory experiments and scaled prototyping.
Army Secretary Mark Esper says the government and industry investment in these technology demonstrators will help the service move faster in the longer term. “We test, we fail, we learn, we prototype, and we repeat until we narrow the requirements and get on a much quicker trajectory to get to the end state we want.”
Jura The idiot
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TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Army aviation at ‘a crossroads’ as future requirements take shape
By: 22 hours ago
, according to Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who has taken the lead on the service’s Future Vertical Lift modernization effort.
But even before the Army makes the decision in the next couple of years on whether it’s ready to take the plunge and back off its older fleet in favor of a new one, the service has submitted initial requirements for its future family of helicopters and those are awaiting approval by Army senior leadership, Rugen said.
“Now we kind of find ourselves at an inflection point of, ‘well, do we keep incrementally upgrading stuff we originally designed in 1970 or do we go for that clean sheet design?’” Rugen said. “Certainly where we are headed is that clean sheet design.”
The approval of thosewill come even before a prototype effort — the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration (JMR-TD) — wraps up. The effort is supposed to help refine requirements for an FVL program of record.
There are two demonstrators that will fly over the course of the year to educate the Army in terms of what is in the realm of the possible. One aircraft — — is already flying while the Sikorsky-Boeing developed aircraft —— is delayed by roughly a year and won’t fly until after this summer, but, .
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Sikorsky and Boeing have worked together on their offering for the U.S. Army's joint multi-role technology demonstrator called the SB-1 Defiant. (Photo courtesy of Boeing and Sikorsky)
With some major requirements encompassing the airframe, its mission systems architecture and even future unmanned aircraft systems close to approval, the Army is making progress
The Army’s ultimate goal is to initially field a new aircraft in the early 2030s although there.
When asked about the apparent delay in the process, Rugen said, “I don’t see it that way,” noting the funding profile remained consistent across the five-year budget plan.
“There were a few very small moves, but that was just housekeeping,” he added. “As far as the Army is concerned we are on the original schedule. We are on schedule.”
Rugen is in charge of a cross-functional team formed specifically to focus on vertical lift modernization, the third most important modernization priority of six the service has laid out. , which will be house as part of the Army Futures Command that will stand up this summer.
The CFT has already put a great amount of thought into what a future fleet will look like, how it will operate and how it will contribute to multidomain battle, a guiding concept recently formalized within the service.
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Bell Helicopter’s V-280 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft should be a welcome addition to units conducting fast rope insertions, rappelling, or any other air assault operation. (Bell)
The Army plans to build an open systems approach for its FVL aircraft, meaning it will create its own digital backbone that sets up the architecture, so any mission system or sensor developed to the backbone’s software and hardware standards can plug in akin to how apps are developed for Apple or Samsung devices.
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That system will be demonstrated again in 2020, Rugen noted.
The Army’s CFT is also analyzing what types of unmanned aircraft systems it wants to adopt for the future fleet and while the service is planning demonstrations of prototypes for a future tactical UAS, Rugen said that is just a part of what the service is considering.
For instance, when looking at optimizing for large-scale, multidomain combat, the Army doesn’t see just pairing UAS with manned helicopters like it does now, but in more advanced formations.
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Modular missile technology is another capability the Army believes it will need in order to improve standoff capability, Rugen said, but noted “quite honestly, the price point needs to improve.”
For example, if the target isn’t an armored vehicle, perhaps there’s something cheaper than Hellfire that can do the job, he said.
Modular missile technology, he explained, gives you a kinetic menu to choose from for the front-end of the missile, from flares to flechettes to armored penetrating shape charge.
“I think it is something that is disruptive,” he added.
The team is also looking at increasing the range of those missiles and how to get after better price points.
The CFT is also interested in using science and technology efforts to help offload the cognitive burden from the air crew, so it is planning to invest in holistic situational awareness capability, according to Rugen. Among that is how to use artificial intelligence in situations of degraded visual environments to navigate safely to the ground. DVE has been a problem the Army has been trying to solve for well over a decade.
The team is working across some of the other CFTs to help deliver certain effects on the battlefield, Rugen said. For example, to improve air-to-ground integration and operating in a GPS or satellite denied environment requires partnering with the Network and the Precision Navigation and Timing CFTs.
And the FVL CFT is working with the Long-Range Precision Fires team on how FVL, in a forward position, could serve as a means to detect and target threats for a Fires team. “We have the means to target for LRPF at