The Sikorsky S-97 Raider (left) and Sikorsky-Boeing SB>1 Defiant (left) are contending for the Army’s Future Vertical Lift scout and transport, respectively.
UPDATED with Rugen email WASHINGTON: If the Army could afford only one of its two manned Future Vertical Lift aircraft, which would it prioritize? “Obviously, our number one gap is in FARA, the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft,” which fills the hole left in scout squadrons by retirement of the OH-58 Kiowa, said Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, FVL director for Army Futures Command. But, he said “that’s kind of a false choice,” because the Army has learned to be cost-conscious from the cancellation of the Comanche back in 2004.
Brig. Gen. Walter Rugen
“Compare and contrast it with the prototyping effort we did with Comanche where [we spent], inflation adjusted, about $9 billion to get to the [two] prototypes,” Rugen told AUSA’s Global Force Next conference Wednesday morning. “We’re at a little over $7 billion to get 18 prototypes out on FARA and FLRAA,” the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk.
[UPDATE: These figures sum up over a decade of development in each case, Rugen explained in a followup email. “Both numbers — Comanche & FARA//FLRAA — represent over a decade of investment and capability development in these complex weapon systems,” he told me. “It is the full life cycle of the development activity. For FLRAA and FARA, [it’s] less resource intensive.”]
Bell V-280 Valor, a leading contender for FLRAA.
“And that is because industry has significant skin in the game,” Rugen said. “They spend their dollars very wisely.”
In other words, private companies have invested a lot of their own money developing Future Vertical Lift aircraft. Bell Textron and a Sikorsky-Boeing team spent heavily on their V-280 Valor and SB>1 Defiant, basically prototypes for FLRAA, under the partially government-funded Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration. Sikorsky built its S-97 Raider, essentially a FARA prototype, entirely at its own expense.
The other big difference from the Comanche debacle, Rugen argued, is that there’s far less competition within the Army’s aviation budget. In 1996, when the Comanche first took flight, the Army was also trying to upgrade a host of existing aircraft, many of them bought during the Reagan buildup: AH-64 Apache gunships, UH-60A Black Hawk transports, CH-47C Chinook heavy lifters, and OH-58C Kiowa Warrior scouts. By 2004, with the Iraq War raging, the Army decided to prioritize the four near-term upgrades over the longer-term, higher-tech Comanche.
The two contenders for the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA): The Bell 360 Invictus (top) and the Sikorsky Raider-X (bottom)
“It’s not that we couldn’t do one with Comanche, it’s we couldn’t do five [modernization programs at once],” Rugen said. “Late this decade, we’ll be doing two.”
Only two, truly? Yes, Rugen said, because – unlike in the 1990s and early 2000s – the current helicopter fleet is thoroughly modernized and doesn’t need a massive investment in upgrades.
Rugen didn’t list models, but that modernized “enduring force” includes AH-64E Apaches; UH-60L, M, and V-model Black Hawks; and CH-47F Chinooks (both Block I and Block II). The service has actually tried to stop buying new Chinooks but was overruled by Congress. (The service is acquiring a new tactical drone, FTUAS, but that’s much less expensive than a new manned aircraft).
The cancelled RAH-66 Comanche
Now, the Army still wants to upgrade its existing aircraft and backfit new technologies developed for FVL onto Apaches, Black Hawks, and Chinooks. But it has a new strategy for upgrades, too, known as Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA). In essence, instead of each upgrade being its own bespoke redesign, with extensive testing, the Army aims to plug-and-play new technologies from any vendor with relative ease, as long as each component meets certain common technical standards. The FVL aircraft will be built around a MOSA approach from the ground up, but the Army’s also working to implement a partial form of MOSA on its existing aircraft.
“On the enduring fleet, it’s going to be an incremental approach,” not a big-bang all at once, cautioned Brig. Gen. Robert Barrie, who as Program Executive Officer for Aviation oversees both upgrades and new procurement. “[But] we’re looking at all opportunities [for] both the enduring fleet and the future fleet [to implement] open system approaches.”
How does this work? “Folks may be familiar with the Architecture Collaboration Working Group that has been stood up and contains numerous industry, academia, US government,” Barrie told the AUSA webcast. “Really anyone who has an idea about what architecture interfaces need to look like, has been involved in that for upwards of over a year now. So we’ve captured all of that data, and we have both a Future Vertical Lift architecture framework and then a larger enterprise architecture framework” for non-FVL aircraft.
Since the “O” in MOSA standards for “open” – after all, industry can’t comply with standards it doesn’t know in detail – the Army intends to provide the architectural frameworks to companies as Government-Furnished Information (GFI).
Will the Army hire a single contractor as “mission system integrator” to implement MOSA across the fleet? ““What we’re doing is exploring all options,” Barrie said. “However, we don’t believe it’s necessary.”
